Popular thinking has the Tampa Bay Buccaneers targeting former Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston with the first-overall selection in the first-round of the 2015 NFL Draft.
While many signs have emerged pointing to just that outcome, there seems to be a growing chorus of voices pointing to a variety of separate outcomes.
The latest, from none other than ESPN NFL analyst Ron Jaworski, says that Bucs head coach Lovie Smith will stick with the quarterback position, but instead of making Winston the team's first-round pick, will go with former Oregon signal-caller and Heisman Trophy-winner, Marcus Mariota.
"The latest I'm hearing now from my sources around the league, who are pretty wired in, is that he's going to go number one now to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers," said Jaworski, while appearing on CSN's Philly Sports Talk, per Tim McManus of Philly Mag.
"Mariota's stock, remember it was quiet for a while? And there's a reason for that. There's a lull every year until about 30 days before the draft. Now the coaches get involved. Prior to that, it's the scouts, it's the roadies that are filling out the paper work. Now the coaches get involved. Now team owners get involved. Now general managers get involved. So you're starting to see, in my opinion, Winston's stock starting to slide a little bit and Mariota's stock starting to go up a little bit."
A report emerged last week that the Bucs, and specifically late owner Malcolm Glazer's daughter Darcie Glazer Kassewitz, had begun to question the notion of selecting Winston.
"The source did not say Kassewitz was against drafting Winston," writes Charles Robinson of Yahoo! Sports. "Nor did the source say Mariota or any other player was preferred at No. 1. But the source said that Kassewitz - who is the co-president of the Glazer Family Foundation - has raised some internal questions about the community relations impact of the pick."
Winston, of course, is about as enticing a prospect on the field as he is potentially combustible and immature off of it. He is set to enter the league with a number of transgressions already tied to his name, including an accusation of rape and an ill-fated decision to steal crab legs from a Florida grocery store.
Still, it's important to note when discussing the potential of the Bucs and Smith going with Mariota - a spread-option quarterback at the collegiate level - over Winston, who helmed a pro-style offense at FSU that while with the Chicago Bears, Smith hand-selected the likes of Rex Grossman, Kyle Orton, Jay Cutler and Josh McCown either via trade or the draft as his starting quarterbacks.
What, if anything, that murderer's row of mediocre pocket-passers portends for Tampa Bay's future at quarterback will be revealed later this month.
Interestingly for Bucs fans, Mariota's former college coach and current head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, Chip Kelly, is so high on the former Duck that according to Jaworski, he hasn't hidden his appreciation of and high expectations for Mariota at the NFL level, even going so far as to tell other league executives that Mariota has "multiple Super Bowls in the National Football League" in his future.
"Now, he didn't say it was going to be in Philadelphia (laughs), but that's how much he loves this guy, and a lot of people feel the same way, that Marcus Mariota is that good that you can win multiple Super Bowls with him as your quarterback."
