What The Bucs Added With New QB Easton Stick

Stick spent 2025 on the Falcons practice squad and comes to Tampa Bay with a familiarity with Robinson’s system and experience stretching across 200 regular season dropbacks and seven preseason stretches totalling another 416 dropbacks.

Stick represents the experience the Bucs thought they were getting when they signed Browning.

Where Easton Stick Succeeds

Easton Stick is a good processor who understands conceptually what to look for and where to go with the ball. He makes generally good decisions and can keep Zac Robinson’s offense on time. Early in the season he may be the more trusted hand while rookie Jalon Daniels continues to develop behind the scenes. He can make the easy to intermediate difficulty throws and shows good touch when targeting the deep areas outside the hashes.

That touch downfield makes him a threat at multiple levels and keeps defenses honest. Stick is also a plus athlete from a testing perspective. That makes him a good fit for Robinson’s bootleg-heavy system.

Where Easton Stick Struggles

While he has good touch downfield, Easton Stick’s arm isn’t exactly strong. He has to muscle up to get the ball downfield and his throws lack the velocity of other players, like Jalon Daniels. This invites safeties to enter the play when he’s attempting those hole shots outside the numbers.

That lack of arm strength may contribute to his reluctance to target the middle of the field.

Stick avoids the intermediate level of the field and throwing inside the hashes, opting for a checkdown or touchdown approach. He prefers to target quick hitters like hitches and flats. Hilariously, Easton’s favorite route combo seems to be stick (a condensed, two-man route concept with receiver No. 1 running a hitch and No. 2 running a flat underneath it).

Stick’s ball placement when putting air under his deep shots is excellent, but on quicker developing in-breakers that placement falters. When he targets digs and slants, Stick’s throws are often late and behind his target.

And while his athleticism is strong in controlled drills, his speed doesn’t play well when he’s on the move looking to make a play with his arm. Stick’s athleticism doesn’t extend to varied arm angles while throwing on the run. He has a penchant for trying to stop and reset his base unless it’s a designed rollout with a quick release to a short flat.

Easton Stick vs. Jalon Daniels For The Bucs’ Early Season

Is Easton Stick’s experience an early season upgrade over Jalon Daniels while the younger quarterback continues to learn and develop? I’m not so sure. After Daniels performed well in the preseason to demand being rostered, I still thought Jake Browning was the better option as QB2 to start the season. While his ceiling didn’t come close to Daniels’, his ability to operate in the system was enough of a strength to be the better option early.

But with Stick the ceiling is even more limited. His athleticism is more straight-line than fluid and he lacks the arm strength to take advantage of his plus touch. That, plus his lack of aggressiveness to the middle of the field, limits the offense to where I would just lean to the upside of the former Kansas product.

Still, Stick provides some value as a practice squad player who can provide a sounding board for Baker Mayfield and an additional mentor for Daniels. For less than $500,000 that’s a solid investment.