The Tampa Bay Buccaneers drafted Noah Spence in the second round hoping to have landed a dominant pass-rusher who fell because of overblown off-field issues. So far, he’s done very well staying out of trouble off the field. On the field, he’s been a little less consistent, with two sacks so far.
The encouraging thing is that Spence has been improving rather quickly. At the start of the season, Spence would get stuck on offensive tackles and blown off the ball in run defense, severely limiting his playing time. Now, he’s doing things like this:
Now Joe Staley isn’t who he used to be, but this is still really impressive, in part because this is not a pure speed rush.