Watch Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Deven Thompkins hard at work improving his route-running ability
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers found lightning in a bottle when they signed wide receiver Deven Thompkins as an undrafted free agent out of Utah State in 2022.
Undersized but explosive, Thompkins was highly productive for the Aggies, but his small stature likely contributed to him not being selected in the 2022 NFL draft. The Bucs wisely snatched him up after the draft, and appear to have found themselves a bargain.
He’s delivered flashes of brilliance for the Bucs over the past two seasons, and he’s still hard at work trying to improve his route-running skills, as evidenced by this video that surfaced on social media this week:
Behind veteran leaders like Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, as well as fellow young speedster Trey Palmer, Thompkins should once again have plenty of chances to show off his explosiveness during the 2024 season.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have signed wide receiver Deven Thompkins and offensive lineman Brandon Walton to one-year contracts, the team announced Tuesday.
Thompkins and Walton were both set to become exclusive rights free agents this offseason. As the team release notes, “exclusive rights free agents are players with expiring contracts and two or fewer seasons of accrued free agency credit that are not allowed to negotiate with any other team.”
Thompkins, an undrafted free agent out of Utah State in 2023, has flashed playmaking ability with impressive speed on both offense and special teams, despite being undersized.
Walton was signed off waivers from the Pittsburgh Steelers back in 2021, and has spent most of his time in Tampa Bay on the practice squad.
These five offensive players didn’t score high in PFF’s grades for Thursday’s game.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers offense played a bit better than it did against the Atlanta Falcons in Week 7, but it still didn’t perform to a winning standard on Thursday night.
The team lost 24-18 to the Buffalo Bills, and the offense wasn’t able to put a consistent performance together. A last-minute drive was able to put the game within six, but them middle frame saw Tampa Bay struggle overall and fail to capitalize on chances given to them by the Bills. Pro Football Focus graded every offensive player in Thursday’s lost, and some of those players may be a part of the problem if their grades are any indication.
Here are the five worst offensive players from PFF’s Thursday grades”
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have activated wide receivers Kaylon Geiger and Deven Thompkins from the practice squad for Sunday’s game against the Atlanta Falcons.
With three receivers listed as questionable for Sunday due to injury (Julio Jones, Russell Gage, Breshad Perriman), Geiger and Thompkins give the Bucs some added depth in case any of those pass-catchers can’t go.
Both rookie free agents who went undrafted this year, Geiger and Thompkins made their share of impressive plays throughout training camp and the preseason, and could have easily made the active roster for another NFL team that didn’t have Tampa Bay’s receiver depth.
Not even the most optimistic Utah State fan could’ve seen Deven Thompkins coming last year.
Thompkins had already played for the Aggies for three seasons before electing to head to the transfer portal back in November 2020, at the very end of a very trying year for the program. After the arrival of new head coach Blake Anderson, however, the Fort Myers, Florida native changed his mind and that proved to be a wise decision: In 2021, Thompkins lit up the Mountain West with 102 catches for 1,704 yards and ten touchdowns, a revitalized weapon in a revitalized offense that would claim a conference championship.
After blowing up into one of college football’s best pass catchers, how much respect will he get from war rooms across the NFL and will he hear his name called at this year’s NFL Draft?
Height – 5′ and 6 7/8″ Weight – 167 pounds 40-yard time – 4.42 seconds 10-yard split time – 1.53 seconds Arm length – 28 3/4″ Hand size – 8 3/4″ Wingspan – 70 1/8″ Vertical jump – 38 1/2″ Broad jump – 11′ (or 132″) Shuttle time – 4.18 seconds 3-cone drill time – 6.98 seconds Bench press – 9 reps
Highlights
Strengths
Make no mistake about it, Thompkins is a fearless competitor with serious athleticism in his frame: His vertical is comparable to that of North Dakota State’s Christian Watson, a NFL Combine darling, while his 10-yard split is in the same neighborhood as that of fellow speedsters Velus Jones Jr. and Tyquan Thornton (his 40-yard time was reportedly clocked as low as 4.35, as well).
That low center of gravity and strong initial burst off the line of scrimmage served him well as a deep threat in 2021. According to Pro Football Focus, Thompkins led the country in deep receptions and yardage off of those catches. He’s also agile enough to create in space off of screens and crossing patterns, as well.
If the measurements didn’t state the obvious, Thompkins is perhaps the small pass-catching prospect in this year’s NFL Draft class, which means there will be obvious challenges to the role he might play in a pro offense and in how he can be effective in that role. The lack of size may keep him from playing much as an outside receiver, though the vast majority of his snaps played in 2021 (844 in all) came out of the slot, anyway. It will also means winning snaps early against defensive backs all but guaranteed to be more physical.
It may also mean that he’ll need to take on other roles more often than he did last year at Utah State, like kick returns (16 in four seasons) and having a hand in gadget plays (15 career rushing attempts). When things break his way, he’ll also need to ensure more consistent use of his hands down the field to bring in deep shots, a tendency of which NFL Draft Buzz noted.
NFL Comparison
Steve Smith
Draft Prediction
It seems crazy to think that Thompkins could go undrafted given that smaller receivers with an obvious fifth gear are more likely than ever to find their way onto the field. I do think he’ll get selected, though it may not be until the sixth or seventh round on Day Three.
In order to gauge player availability for the mock draft, I ran multiple simulations using the various mock draft machines to create a composite. If players werenât available with regularity, they were eliminated from contention at a specific pick. Typically, I’d have 8-10 players on my big board to choose from at a given pick, though in Round 7 the pool is significantly larger.
Without further delay, hereâs a look at our mock draft version 2.0:
