5 NFL teams that are going to wish they drafted Stetson Bennett IV

Stetson Bennett IV could have beaten out Baker Mayfield and Kyle Trask in camp

As I watched Bennett carve up the Rams’ first-team defense filling in for Matthew Stafford, I began to realize that maybe he could have won the miserable starting quarterback race over Baker Mayfield and Kyle Trask in Tampa Bay. Despite Tom Brady’s best efforts, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers never seem to get right at quarterback for very long. At the very least, Bennett could have started there.

Look. Nobody openly tanks, but it would really serve the Buccaneers to bottom out and get wholly into the Caleb Williams/Drake Maye sweepstakes. Yes, Todd Bowles doesn’t want to get fired, but how shocked would you be if the Buccaneers trade up to No. 2 with Arizona, take Maye and have him learn under first-time head coach Brian Callahan? It would have been cool, but so expensive.

Since the Buccaneers still have plenty of remnants from the Super Bowl 55 championship roster, they are not going to be as bad as one would think. Quarterback play may be a disadvantage for them, but if they had Bennett’s draft rights for four-plus years, they could have saved a ton of money and could have been able to rebuild on the fly around an over-performing star quarterback.

Tampa Bay was not a great landing spot for Bennett, but it would have been an okay place to start.