Bucs Make Adjustments to Football Staff

Bucs Make Adjustments to Football Staff

Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Alex Smith is one of three new additions to the team’s coaching and player personnel staff announced on Tuesday. Two other returning staff members will be taking on new titles and new responsibilities.

Smith joins General Manager Jason Licht’s staff as a pro scout after working with the Buccaneers in last year’s training camp. Skyler Fulton comes aboard as the new offensive assistant on Dirk Koetter’s coaching staff and Anthony Perkins takes over as the new assistant to the head coach.

That final move is related to two other changes on the staff. Perkins takes over the position previously held by Zack Grossi, who will now be an offensive quality control coach. Grossi replaces Ben Steele, who was promoted to tight ends coach after the departure of Jon Embree. In addition, Danny Breyer, who spent the 2016 season as a football analytics assistant, will now serve as a defensive assistant.

The Buccaneers drafted Smith out of Stanford in the third round in 2005, which led to an 11-year NFL playing career that concluded in 2015. The first four of those seasons were spent in Tampa, during which he caught 129 passes for 1,252 yards and 11 touchdowns. Smith later spent one season with Philadelphia (2000), three with Cleveland (2010-12), two with Cincinnati (2013-14) and one with Washington (2015). He began his transition to the player personnel side of the business with the Buccaneers through the Nunn-Wooten Scouting Fellowship.

Fulton also got his feet wet with the Buccaneers this past preseason, working with the team through the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellows program. He served as a graduate assistant at Colorado in 2009 and his coaching experience also includes stops at Citrus College (wide receivers/special teams) and Grossmont College (running backs/special teams). As a player, Fulton was a wide receiver at Arizona State who had NFL stops in Indianapolis, Minnesota and Seattle. He also played two seasons in NFL Europe with the Amsterdam Admirals.

Perkins was also a Walsh Coaching Fellow with the Buccaneers in 2016, working with the team during its June mini-camp. That opportunity came during the midst of a two-year run as the cornerbacks coach at Ohio University. Perkins first entered the coaching field in 2012 as a technical intern at his alma mater, the University of Colorado, and later spent time with the Denver Broncos during training camp. He also served two seasons as the secondary coach at Indiana State.

Before joining the Buccaneers in 2016, Breyer had worked with the Miami Dolphins’ coaching staff the previous year. His coaching path began at Illinois in 2009, where he was an undergraduate assistant for two years. He later held the same role at Akron in 2010 and 2011 before joining the Zips’ staff as a defensive graduate assistant in 2012. After one year as the assistant to the head coach in 2013, Breyer returned to Akron to serve as an offensive graduate assistant.

Grossi has been with the Buccaneers since 2014. He first came aboard as a scouting assistant before being promoted to a pro scout position in 2015. Last year, the Tampa native transitioned into a new role as Koetter’s assistant, and now he will once again take on a new role with the coaching staff. Before coming to the Buccaneers, Grossi worked as an offensive graduate assistant, tight ends coach and video coordinator for Concord University, his alma mater.

(Why?)

Published at Tue, 14 Feb 2017 19:21:12 +0000

---