(Note: The Salty Dogs is a long-running podcast produced by Buccaneer staffers Jeff Ryan and Scott Smith on a weekly basis during the regular season, frequently featuring Tampa Bay players as guests. The following is excerpted from this week’s interview on the podcast with rookie wide receiver Kameron Johnson.)
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers haven't had a kickoff return for a touchdown since 2010, representing the longest current drought for any team in the NFL. However, the league is introducing a vastly reimagined kickoff process in 2024 and that represents, at the very least, mystery as to what lies ahead. The NFL hopes it will restore the kickoff return to prominence, and every team in the league is hoping it can find a way to exploit the new rules for big plays.
One player new to the Bucs' roster and surely heretofore unfamiliar with the organization's fraught history with the kickoff return – it took 32 seasons and 1,865 runbacks before the Bucs got one into the end zone in 2007 – thinks he may be the man to end the drought. That would be undrafted rookie wide receiver Kameron Johnson, one of the most exciting success stories of the summer and one of four players listed as kickoff returners on the Bucs' current depth chart.
When informed that the Buccaneers had gone the last 13 seasons without a kickoff return touchdown, Johnson had a quick and simple response.
"Well, that's going to change," he said with a broad smile.
Johnson, fellow rookies Bucky Irving and Jalen McMilland second-year back Sean Tucker are the Bucs' listed candidates to return kickoffs. Two of them will be on the field for each kickoff, and if either fields the ball in the "landing zone" (goal line to the 20-yard line), they are required to run it. There are no fair catches and touchbacks will only occur if the ball is downed in the end zone, resulting in the ball being placed at the 30-yard line. The idea of the new format was to increase team's incentive to return kickoffs, and to try to force returns rather than settle for touchbacks. It remains to be seen if the new rules will have the desired effect, but Johnson, for one, is hoping he gets to run with the ball.
"It's going to be fun to be a part of," he said. "It just happens so fast, and guys with speed like me, I think it's going to be lovely for them. Just that one gap…it's a run play. You've just got to see that one gap and you're gone."
It's safe to say the NFL experience has already been a fun one for Johnson, who is now the first player to make it to the NFL out of the fledgling football program at Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina. He chose to attend Barton because he believed in the coaching staff and the program they were building, and because it was close to home, allowing his family to attend. He admits that, when he set off for school, he wasn't really thinking about ending up in the NFL.
"They always tell me if you can play, they will find you, but I didn't really believe that," he said. "I just came with the mindset to be my best self every day, just give me all out for the team so the team no matter what cost. But I never thought the NFL, never."
As time went on, however, he began to see the possibility, and while he may have seemed like an underdog when he signed with the Buccaneers after the draft, by that time his confidence had grown.
"You've got to come in with confidence," he said. "Of course you're at this level, but you've also got to believe in yourself for what your abilities that God blessed you with that you can be at this level. So definitely that was my mindset coming in, that I was going to make the team. I'm trying to stay humble, trying not to let it get to me, but I knew I was going to make the team."
