The 2020 NFL Draft is in the books, and that means it’s time for us to fully turn our attention to the 2020 NFL season and fantasy football. While COVID-19 means we can’t guarantee an NFL season, our league mates want us to be on our heels, unprepared for the season. Never you fear, Football Absurdity is here to cover all of the 78 fantasy football eligible players drafted in the 2020 NFL Draft. Keep in mind, most of these guys won’t get selected in your draft, but you’ll want to know these 2020 NFL draftees when your fantasy football draft comes around. We complete our NFC South two-step with a look at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a wild ride last season, with Jameis Winston pulling down a 30/30 season. Unlike baseball, getting a 30/30 season isn’t… good. It means Winston threw thirty interceptions, apparently because his eyes didn’t work right (?!). That’s okay, now the Buccaneers have Tom Brady, who joins Emmitt Smith, Jerry Rice and Joe Namath in the all-time “wait what uniform are you wearing?!” Hall of Fame. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers added three fantasy football eligible players to their team through the draft: two running backs and a wide receiver. Do any of these blokes have what it takes for you to consider them in your 2020 fantasy football drafts?
FULL TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS DRAFT RESULTS
| Rd | Pick | Player | Pos | School |
| 1 | 13 | Tristan Wirfs | OT | Iowa |
| 2 | 13 | Antoine Winfield Jr | S | Minnesota |
| 3 | 12 | Ke’Shawn Vaughn | RB | Vandy |
| 5 | 15 | Tyler Johnson | WR | Minnesota |
| 6 | 15 | Khalil Davis | DT | Nebraska |
| 7 | 27 | Chappelle Russell | OLB | Temple |
| 7 | 31 | Raymond Calais | RB | Louisiana |
Round 3, Pick 12: Ke’Shawn Vaughn, Running Back, Vanderbilt (5’10” 214 lbs)
| 40-yd Dash | Bench Press | Vertical Jump | Broad Jump | 3 Cone | 20-yd shuttle | 60-yd shuttle |
| 4.51s (u) | — | 32.0 in | 117.0 in | — | — | — |
Courtesy: NFL.com, (u) = unofficial.
Depth Chart:
RB1 Ronald Jones II
RB2 Ke’Shawn Vaughn
RB3 Raymond Calais
RB4 Dare Ogunbowale
TALENT
Vaughn hits the hole hard and gets big gains when they’re there. He has great contact balance and will carry guys for several yards while they fully try to stop him In reviewing highlights, you see the best of times: Vaughn stacked up at the 3-yard line and somehow scored without significant OL push. He has a good jump cut. He’s athletic. Nothing jumps off the tape other than his exceptional contact balance and his ability to take a hole a long way. Vaughn caught enough balls to call it a part of his game, but not enough to get excited about it.
The big thing that will get Vaughn on the field is pass blocking: he was the most efficient pass-blocking running back drafted in 2020, according to PFF. That will go a long way toward keeping Tom Brady upright, which means a lot more snaps for Vaughn than Jones, who Bruce Arians benched last year for missing a pass-blocking assignment.
2020 OPPORTUNITY
The wild thing about analyzing Ke’Shawn Vaughn’s 2020 opportunity is that it says more about what you think about Ronald Jones than anything else. I was famously (in my own household) down on Ronald Jones last season, but he turned in a good performance when considering Arians’ love of Peyton Barber(???) last season. It’s a foregone conclusion that Jones starts the season as the RB1 in this offense, with Dare Ogunbowale desperately trying to be A Thing as the passing downs back. The only question: where does Vaughn fit in, and can he usurp Ronald Jones?
Personally, I think he can usurp Jones, but I’m not entirely confident in that. I’m having vibes going back to C.J. Anderson in Peyton Manning’s final season, where he was kicked off the field for inferior overall backs who could pass catch better. That’s the path forward for Vaughn. Don’t forget, though, that Bruce Arians kept David Johnson (who was good at the time) on the bench for Chris Johnson (who was bad at the time) until DJ forced his hand.
Still, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have to have a plan for Vaughn, as backs with fewer question marks (J.K. Dobbins and Cam Akers) were still on the board when he took Vaughn. It’s likely that they’re jettisoning the Ogunbowale experiment entirely and turning Ke’Shawn Vaughn into the new James White. If that happens… hoo boy. We are off to the races.
2020 FANTASY FOOTBALL OUTLOOK
Vaughn’s outlook is all over the board right now. It mostly hinges on how we think he will do head-to-head with Ronald Jones to get the lion’s share of the RB touches there in Tampa Bay. Jones and Vaughn are going nearly back-to-back in expert consensus ranking, with Vaughn the #101-ranked player and Jones the #106. Personally, I think that Vaughn and Jones settle into a role split, with Vaughn being a much better Peyton Barber. They’ll both return top-30 RB value unless one gets hurt. Dare Ogunbowale loses all relevance in this scenario, though a lot of that has to do with Raymond Calais (see below).
TALENT: 
OPPORTUNITY: 
2020 FANTASY FOOTBALL OUTLOOK:
Round 5, Pick 15: Tyler Johnson, Wide Receiver, Minnesota (6’1” 206 lbs)
| 40-yd Dash | Bench Press | Vertical Jump | Broad Jump | 3 Cone | 20-yd shuttle | 60-yd shuttle |
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Courtesy: NFL.com, (u) = unofficial.
Depth Chart:
WR1 Mike Evans
WR2 Chris Godwin
WR3 Tyler Johnson
WR4 Justin Watson
WR5 Scott Miller
TALENT
Johnson is a well-polished route runner through zones that allow him to seemingly always be open in zone coverage. He doesn’t have the athleticism to make this work with man coverage, however. Ultimately, he is smooth and fluid with great hands that make it less of a problem that if you man up on him he can’t get open. 50/50 balls are so in name only with Johnson, as his late, vice-grip hands make balls stay with their intended target instead of the nefarious defensive backs who plot to abscond with the football. He is an okay blocker at the line of scrimmage but bad on the second level.
He didn’t test at the NFL Combine and didn’t get a Senior Bowl invite. We truly haven’t seen him since the Outback Bowl.
2020 OPPORTUNITY
It’s going to be incredibly hard to find more than 60 targets or so for Tyler Johnson. He’s behind Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, three tight ends and two running backs in the target pecking order. That makes him he third wide receiver for a team that has three good tight ends, meaning he’ll be watching from the sidelines more often than not. He’s a big, beefy slot receiver, but athleticism and speed are massive question marks.
2020 FANTASY FOOTBALL OUTLOOK
There’s just too much riding against him having a big 2020 season. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers likely took him as a player who does more to help Tom Brady than anything else. Unless there’s an injury ahead of him in the Buccaneers’ receiving corps, I can’t cosign him. After all, that worked for Breshad Perriman, so why wouldn’t it work for Johnson?
TALENT: 
OPPORTUNITY: 
2020 FANTASY FOOTBALL OUTLOOK:
Round 7, Pick 31 : Raymond Calais, Running Back, Louisiana-Lafayette (5’8” 188 lbs)
| 40-yd Dash | Bench Press | Vertical Jump | Broad Jump | 3 Cone | 20-yd shuttle | 60-yd shuttle |
| 4.42s (u) | 20 reps | 37.5 in | 120.0 in |
Courtesy: NFL.com, (u) = unofficial.
Depth Chart:
RB1 Ronald Jones II
RB2 Ke’Shawn Vaughn
RB3 Raymond Calais
RB4 Dare Ogunbowale
TALENT
Calais is a one-trick pony, and that trick is to find a direction and running in it, as fast as possible. His 4.42-second 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine shows that he’s not bad at that one trick. As for the rest of his tricks? Well, he’s not so great. He can maximize big holes with extreme speed and burst but is utterly incapable of finding a hole in traffic or breaking any tackles at the line of scrimmage. He has almost no wiggle and just utilizes decent open field vision to angle away from defenders instead of trying to juke them. I wouldn’t try to juke them either if I planted and cut like Calais, to be honest.
I didn’t see him get a single target or break a single second-level tackle. If you give him a big hole, however, he can hit a home run.
2020 OPPORTUNITY
He’ll be fine as a change-of-pace back who is out there to try to take advantage of some light fronts. Otherwise, he poses no threat to either Ronald Jones or Ke’Shawn Vaughn’s role in the offense. He could steal a lot of snaps from Dare Ogunbowale, but other than that, you can mostly ignore him unless there are some serious injuries ahead of him.
2020 FANTASY FOOTBALL OUTLOOK
Remember Antone Smith? He had 61 career touches and scored 38+ yard touchdowns on seven of them. He also never reached fantasy relevance. Sounds about right.
TALENT:
OPPORTUNITY:
2020 FANTASY FOOTBALL OUTLOOK:
For more 2020 NFL Draft coverage, check out these:
The Rookie Roundup… Roundup
Fantasy Football Fallout: 2020 NFL Draft Round One
Football Absurdity Podcast: First Round Recap
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