Did Bucs have a first-round grade on kicker Roberto Aguayo?

Roberto Aguayo (AP) In a long, fascinating story in Pewter Report, which looked back at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ recent draft class, some very interesting news popped up. It appears they earmarked a first-round grade on a kicker.

That, of course, would be Florida State’s Roberto Aguayo, whom the Buccaneers traded up high in Round 2 to draft. As Bucs general manager Jason Licht says in the exclusive story, it’s easy to connect the dots on how high a grade the team had on Aguayo.

“We had Aguayo ranked high — pretty high,” Licht said. “We moved up into the second round to get him, so that should tell you something about where we had him ranked.”

Typically, a team making such a move, trading up into the late second round (59th overall) to select a player (and give up a fourth-round pick to do so), means it has a very high grade on the player and believes he likely should have been off the board by that point, or that he likely would go before the team otherwise would have picked before the move.

But a first-round grade? On a kicker?! That seemed to be the echo chamber — including from yours truly — outside the building. Inside, there was joy that the Bucs landed such a coveted piece in their eyes, and a Buccaneers source confirmed to Shutdown Corner on Friday that the Pewter Report story framed the Bucs’ draft grades accurately.

After all, ask the Oakland Raiders if Sebastian Janikowski, still going strong all these years later, was worth a mid-first-rounder. Shutdown Corner’s Frank Schwab kicked that topic around on Friday.

“Not a lot of people will ever admit that a kicker is worth a first-round pick,” Licht said. “I’m going to be jumping for joy when a few of the people in your business [the media] realize that some are.”

Licht spent two stints in New England with the Patriots’ front office, and during his second stint there (2009-2011) Bill Belichick asked some of his staff to rank the team’s roster at the time 1 to 53 in terms of importance. When he got the rankings back from the members, there was one interesting but surprising common theme.

“None of us had the kicker, Stephen Gostkowski, in our top 10 — even though he was an excellent kicker,” Licht said. “After we were done, Bill said, ‘Nobody wants to put Gostkowski in our top 10? Why, just because he’s a kicker?’ Bill made us rethink that and he got his point across. He said, ‘You tell me 10 other players that are more important than him!’

“It was an eye-opening moment for me. I had been around Adam Vinatieri and Gostkowski, and those are two of the best. I know how good of a feeling that is to have a guy like that when you know that a lot of the games are going to come down to field goals – a lot of the games come down to the kicker.”

The Buccaneers do not yet know if Aguayo is in that class of kicker but they know that their shortcomings at the position last season cost them opportunities to win games. Aguayo was one of the most decorated college kickers in recent history, and he had an excellent track record making some of the most difficult kicks — especially those from the wider college hashmarks — which sold the Bucs on his ability to convert pressure attempts, especially after he missed only one fourth-quarter kick in his career.

“Roberto is wired differently,” Licht said. “He’s very confident. The folks at Florida State said, ‘He’s one of the leaders on our team.’ You just don’t run across that often at all with kickers. Just the way he carries himself, he’s different. He’s more of a normal teammate as a kicker. He’s a core player and a leader. He has a certain confidence about him. You just like being around him.”

With longer extra-point attempts in the NFL (Aguayo never missed one in college) and an offense that’s still rounding into form, he might be a very welcome addition. His draft value appears to be out of whack on the surface from where he was taken, but if Aguayo helps the Bucs win games the pick will be more than worth it. Right now, the Bucs are confident that they stole their new kicker and didn’t, like everyone assumes, reach for him.