Due in part to how well they pulled talent out of the deep 2010 draft class, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers improved from 3-13 in 2009 to 10-6 this past season, the greatest single-season turnaround in franchise history.

Twenty-one different rookies played for the Buccaneers during the 2010 regular season, 10 of whom started at least one game.  Tampa Bay is the first team since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger to give starts to 10 different rookies and finish with a winning record.

Of course, that success affects how the Buccaneers will approach the 2011 NFL Draft.  Because the Bucs finished within a hair's breadth of the playoffs in 2010, they will slide down from their #3 spot in last year's draft to #20 this coming April.

Perhaps one more outstanding draft weekend will lead to the team picking in the 30s in 2012.

Drafting third in 2010 allowed the Buccaneers to land one of the most coveted talents in the pool, Oklahoma defensive tackle Gerald McCoy.  Obviously, though, the team can still find a premier player at #20, if they stay in that spot.  In fact, that's exactly where they drafted cornerback Aqib Talib out of Kansas in 2008.  Talib tied for fifth in the NFL in interceptions with six in 2010, just two behind the league leader, despite missing the last four games of the season due to a hip injury.

The NFL's draft order is determined by win-loss records from the season before, which is why the 2-14 Carolina Panthers will possess the first pick in the draft.  The Panthers will be followed by the Denver Broncos, Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals, all of whom finished 4-12.

Tampa Bay was one of six teams that finished with a 10-6 record.  However, four of those six teams qualified for the postseason (the Buccaneers and New York Giants lost to the Green Bay Packers on a tiebreaker), and all playoff teams draft in the final 12 spots in the order.

That's how the Buccaneers and Giants ended up picking 19th and 20th.  Any non-playoff teams that finish with the same record are put into "segments" in the first-round draft order.  Within each segment, ties are broken and order is determined by the teams' strength of schedule; that is, the combined win-loss percentage of all 16 opponents a team faced during the regular season.  The team with the lower strength of schedule mark gets the higher pick.  The presumption is that posting a 10-6 record against a harder schedule makes a team slightly better than the team that finished 10-6 against an easier schedule.

The New York Giants' opponents combined for a win-loss record of 116-140, for a winning percentage of .453.  The Buccaneers' opponents went 122-134, for a winning percentage of .477.  That put the Giants one slot ahead of the Bucs, and gave Tampa Bay the lowest possible spot for a non-playoff team.

Below is the entire first-round draft order.  Note that the final 12 spots are tentative at this moment because advancing in the playoffs can change where a team is eventually slotted.  The Super Bowl winner and loser, for instance, pick 32nd and 31st, regardless of what their regular-season record was.  The two teams that lost in the conference championship games pick 30th and 29th, and so on.  The league changed its draft-order rules in 2009 to ensure that all non-playoff teams pick before the 12 teams coming off postseason berths.

Once the first round has concluded, the teams within each tied segment rotate through that portion of the draft order.  The team at the bottom of the segment in one round rotates to the top and every other team moves down one slot.  What that means to the Buccaneers is that they will alternate between the 19th and 20th picks throughout the draft.

Thus, Tampa Bay will own the 51st pick overall, picking 19th in the second round before the Giants go 20th.  In Round Three, the Buccaneers will switch back to 20th, which will be the 84th selection overall.  While the Bucs and Giants will continue to alternate throughout the draft, the precise numbers of the picks in the remaining rounds won't be known until the NFL awards its compensatory selections in the spring.  Compensatory picks are placed at the end of each round, beginning with Round Three.

The Talib selection marked the first time in team history that the Bucs had picked exactly 20th overall.  However, they have been in that general range quite frequently in recent years and have executed those picks very effectively.  In 2006, the Buccaneers drafted Oklahoma guard Davin Joseph with the 23rd overall choice, and Joseph has emerged as one of the league's better interior linemen, earning a Pro Bowl berth in 2008.  In 2009, Tampa Bay was slotted 19th but traded up two spots to #17 in order to grab Kansas State quarterback Josh Freeman.  In his first full season as a starter, Freeman threw 25 touchdown passes and just six interceptions, the ninth-best TD/INT ratio in league history (among QBs with at least 20 TD passes).

Other picks made by the Buccaneers in the 17-23 range include quarterback Doug Williams in 1978, guard Ray Snell in 1980 and defensive tackle Marcus Jones in 1996.

The Buccaneers currently own one pick in each round of the 2011 draft.  That includes their own selection in Rounds 1-5 and Round 7 and the Kansas City Chiefs' choice in Round 6.  The Chiefs are currently slotted 22nd in the draft order but, as they are set to begin the playoffs this weekend, they could end up moving down the list.