Josiah Trotter Gives Bucs The ILB They’ve Been Missing

In 2020, when White earned a second-team All Pro honors during the franchise’s most recent Super Bowl run, the Bucs led the NFL in rushing yards allowed per game (80.6) and yards allowed per rush (3.6). They finished tied for second in tackles for loss (91), tied for fourth in sacks (48), and tied for fifth in takeaways (25). White personally put up 140 tackles, nine sacks and 15 tackles for loss. He was far from a good, or even consistent coverage player. It was a known limitation throughout his Tampa Bay tenure. But that type of linebacker play unlocked the rest of the front.

The simple version: when Bowles has a downhill Mike who can blitz and press, he doesn’t need that player to be a great cover linebacker. He needs him to be a credible threat on every snap, which forces offenses to account for him and frees up the weakside Mo linebacker, in this case, Alex Anzalone, as well as the safeties, and the edge rushers to do their actual jobs. And Bowles is far from the only defensive architect who uses his middle linebacker that way.

The Bucs haven’t had that since White was at his best in the 2020 season. The post-White era at the position has been a parade of two-down run defenders. But without the true pass rushing value, that type doesn’t work in this scheme. Bowles has been forced to scheme around the position rather than through it.

Vice president of player personnel Mike Biehl said as much when explaining the pick: “He understands how to rush the passer, and he can go through running backs’ faces if he chooses to, or he can make them miss. That’s going to be a plus for Todd on third downs. You guys have seen the way that he uses our inside linebackers when Devin was here, and I would anticipate Josiah having a lot of production in that phase.”

Biehl said the quiet part out loud. The Bucs aren’t drafting Trotter to be the next Devin White. They’re drafting him to be the type of linebacker that White was at his best.

Why Josiah Trotter Fits Tampa Bay’s Defense

My pre-draft grades on Trotter weren’t uniformly negative. They were sharply bifurcated, and the strengths fall almost exactly where this defense needs them. His run defense is his calling card. Trotter diagnoses run schemes at the snap, gets downhill in a hurry, and brings legitimate pop on contact.

Biehl described it as old-school Mike traits, the kind “you don’t see a lot in the college game now.” The college game has trended toward sideline-to-sideline space-runners with smaller frames. But the NFL is moving more and more to a 12 and 13 personnel world on offense – begging for defenses to catch up with bigger enforcers in the middle. Trotter is a throwback in the best sense, and he’s walking into a defense that needs exactly that.

As a pass rusher, Trotter has a truly special quality to him. His pressure rate in 2025 was in the 76th percentile. Trotter blitzes with intent and timing, knows how to navigate pullers, and finishes. He had 13 tackles for loss and two sacks last year despite limited rush volume. In a Bucs defense that asks its Mike to attack the A-gap on third downs, that’s a starter-level trait – not a development project.

Trotter’s tackle rate (84th percentile) and stop rate (76th percentile) confirm show that he’s a player who finishes plays.

Now consider Trotter paired with Rueben Bain Jr., who the Bucs took at No. 15 overall in the first round, and the thesis becomes clear. Bain works with Yaya Diaby to create havoc from the outside, defensive tackles Vita Vea and Calijah Kancey work inside to condense the pocket and wreak havoc. Trotter finds gaps, lanes, seams and cervices to put the nail in the coffin.

Add in a leadership element that the team likes and you get the picture of a player who could be the missing link. Trotter himself called it out: “Be an alpha, be a leader, be a green-dot guy.”

Todd Bowles has reportedly told him the green-dot role is on the table. Mike Biehl invoked Lavonte David as a comparison point — carefully, with the disclaimer that he’s never going to compare anyone directly to David, but with intent. The Bucs lost a leader in David’s departure. They believe Trotter can step into a piece of that role.

How It Can Work With Josiah Trotter In The Middle

Two things will have to break right to make this second-round pick age well.

First, the run defense and pass rush have to be as advertised against NFL competition. This is the smallest leap of the three. Josiah Trotter’s tape against SEC offensive lines was already physical. Mike Biehl described his ability to take on NFL-sized linemen as “pretty rare” for a college player. If the trait carries, and there’s no reason to think it won’t, Trotter is an immediate value-add on early downs and obvious blitz situations.

Second, and this is the one with the highest variance, he needs to be functional in coverage on third downs. Not great. Just functional.

A Bucs defense built around Todd Bowles-style pressure and a healthy secondary doesn’t need its Mike linebacker to be a tight end eraser. It needs him to not be a liability when the call doesn’t blitz and he has to drop into a hook zone or get fast to the flat. If Trotter develops to that bar, he’s a three-down player. If he can’t, he’s a base-down thumper who comes off the field on third-and-7, which is a dying breed in the NFL.

The Honest Concerns About Josiah Trotter

Mike Biehl called Josiah Trotter’s coverage concern a “misnomer.” I firmly disagree with that stance. But it’s worth examining honestly.

I have noted previously that because of his youth; there is plenty of room for the 21-year old to grow. He falls for eye-candy in the backfield, which slows him to get to his zone. And I don’t think he shows a great understanding of route concepts around him. Other public draft evaluators flagged the same areas. The consensus board agrees. Which is why Biehl noted that it may have been a narrative that is media-driven.

When the public scouting community converges on a concern and the team that just drafted the player calls it a misnomer, one side has bad information. The Bucs have access to the meeting-room version of Trotter that I don’t. Months of direct evaluation, longstanding relationships with his father and brother, and pre-existing connections through inside linebackers coach Mike Caldwell and Bowles’ camp circle. They’ve graded the player against information I don’t have access to.

But it’s also fair to say the on-field coverage concerns are real. Play-action freezes Trotter a beat too long. He’ll take a wrong step on a high-low concept and end up out of position. He’ll carry a back into the flat and lose the dig route behind him. Those are not minor things in a modern NFL where every defense gets attacked through the middle of the field.

The reconciliation is probably this: Trotter’s coverage limitations are real but are the kind that scheme can mask, and the team feels strongly that growth in this area is in his future. Bowles’ system blitzes inside linebackers more often than most schemes, which means Trotter is rushing on a lot of the snaps he’d otherwise be exposed in coverage. They can find ways to protect him until he figures it out, and Tampa’s pass rush — Rueben Bain, Vita Vea, Yaya Diaby — should keep most QBs from holding the ball long enough to find the routes Trotter doesn’t recover on.

There are also two non-coverage concerns worth keeping on the radar. Trotter has shorter arms than typical for the position, which limits extension and makes it harder to disengage from blockers — a real issue against NFL guards even with his strength. And he had a torn ACL in 2023. Biehl said the team is comfortable with the medical, which is what teams always say after they draft a player, but it’s worth mentioning.

The Bottom Line

The Bucs didn’t take the highest-graded linebacker on my board, or the consensus board. They took the player whose type unlocks the rest of their defense. That’s the same type that anchored their last Super Bowl-winning unit, even when the player filling it wasn’t graded as elite.

If Josiah Trotter holds up against NFL run schemes, blitzes the way he did at Missouri, wears the green-dot effectively, and doesn’t get exposed in coverage worse than the system can hide, this is a good pick with the room to be better than good. The Bucs defense gets back a piece of its identity, the front seven gets a step closer to being complete, and Todd Bowles gets to call the games he wants to call instead of scheming around a positional limitation.

If the coverage limitations are worse than the Bucs believe and the on-field processing doesn’t catch up to the meeting-room version of the player, this is a more athletic SirVocea Dennis. Useful, but not the swing they were hoping to take at bat.

The grade I had on Trotter was about the player. The grade Tampa Bay had was about his fit.

Both grades can be defensible. We’ll find out by year three which one was closer to being right.