Rachaad White, Zyon McCollum Made Second-Year Leaps

Bill Barnwell’s research that takes into account not just the ages of each player on a team’s roster but also how much time they actually spent on the field shows the Bucs to have had the fourth-youngest offense, 13th-youngest defense (hey, we’re glad Lavonte David and Will Gholston were still around) and the eighth-youngest roster overall.

Two of the young players who contributed to that were 2022 draft picks Rachaad White and Zyon McCollum. White took over as the team’s Day One starter in the backfield and accounted for 75.6% of the Bucs’ running back carries while also getting 70 targets in the passing game. McCollum started nine games during the regular season to help the Bucs weather the storm during injuries to starting corners Carlton Davis and Jamel Dean, and when both Davis and Dean got healthy at the same time, he started working in a hybrid safety role.

Both White and McCollum clearly took that “Year Two Leap” that all NFL coaches hope to see from their promising young prospects. White fell just 10 yards shy of his first 1,000-yard rushing season and also finished fourth among all NFL running backs with 1,539 yards from scrimmage. This came after a rookie season in which he didn’t take the starting job from Leonard Fournette until midseason and topped out at 771 yards from scrimmage, less than half his Year Two total.

“It was great to see him grow from a mental standpoint,” said Head Coach Todd Bowles a day after the Bucs’ 2023 run ended in Detroit. “He was always talented, physically. Being a running back is not just carrying the football and running and trying to find daylight. He’s got to know where the hole is before the hole opens. He’s got to know where the blocking is, he’s got to know how to pick up pressures. He runs pass routes; he does a lot of things.”

White didn’t make all of his growth during his first full NFL offseason. In fact, his rushing output early in the 2023 season was a bit of an issue for a Bucs offense that was trying to find its identity under new Offensive Coordinator Dave Canales. White took well to the tutelage of his position coach, Skip Peete, and became much more reliable as a runner as the season progressed.

“From a growth standpoint and a mental standpoint where he was frustrated early in the first few weeks, he kind of eased into it and figured it out,” said Bowles. Skip did a heck of a job coaching him and Rachaad is going to be a heck of a football player – he…