One week from today, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will face a choice that is clearly a gamble on the next five years of that franchise.  Since the end of the NFL season, the Bucs’ have been on the clock with the first pick in the NFL Draft, and the conventional “wisdom” is they are going to take former Seminole and current idiot Jamies Winston.  They couldn’t make a bigger mistake, and I think they know it.

Disagree with me all you want, but I really believe deep down in places they don’t want to admit, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers don’t want to draft Jamies Winston because they know this guy is a train wreck waiting to happen.  But, if there’s such a thing as a “court of public opinion” when it comes to the NFL Draft, the Bucs have almost no choice but to take Winston and pray the pin doesn’t come out of the grenade.

All the signs of catastrophe are there, and that moron Winston made them all come back to light the other day with his exceptionally brilliant statement on the World Wide Bottom Feeder about how he didn’t steal the crab legs in question.

Former Florida State quarterback Jamies Winston is offering an explanation for why he didn’t steal those crab legs last year.

Winston, appearing in an ESPN draft segment Tuesday night that was taped back in February, says a Publix employee he knows used to hook him and his friends up with free stuff:

“Well, a week before, it was my buddy’s birthday and we had got a cake. And we met a dude that worked inside Publix and he said, ‘Hey, anytime you come in here, I got you.’ So that day we just walked out and he hooked us up with that. And when I came in to get crab legs, I did the same thing and he just gave them to me and I walked out. And someone from inside the store had told the security that I didn’t pay for them. And that’s how the whole thing started.”

Let that sink in for a minute. What Winston wants you to believe is that he knowingly got stuff from a store without paying for it, and somehow there was no stealing happening. While you Winston apologists out there do your mental gymnastics to try to tell me how that isn’t fucked up, consider the following.  For close to two years now, Winston has kept himself in the the spotlight, albeit not a positive one, with exactly this kind of crap. So, no matter what excuse come from his apologists, the fact remains that Winston has not learned a single thing from all the bullshit he’s put himself through in that time.  Not one single goddamn thing.

In other words, the Buccaneers are faced with the prospect of taking an immature, “me first,” guy and turbo-charging his assholery and destructive capacity with $40 million. After this last incident, there’s no denying that is an exceptionally real possibility. You can almost hear the pin slipping out of that grenade as we speak.

Still not convinced?  OK, try this one on for size.  Consider the fact the woman who accused Winston of rape is hauling him into civil court.  Did you ever wonder why she’s only after $15,000 in damages from Winston?

First of all, she’s saving the big price tag for Florida State University and the Tallahassee Police, who are going to have a whole mess of fun trying to get put from under what is coming.  After all, it’s pretty clear that something didn’t go according to procedure during this whole affair.  That’s going to come out.

Secondly, once this woman gets a chance to tell her story in a forum where the cops and FSU can’t bury or discredit it, the media fire storm is going to be huge, and a lot of people deservedly so and otherwise, are going to get roasted.

Think about it. This woman is going to go into court, where every word coming out of her mouth will be a matter of public record, and she’s going to paint a detailed picture which is going to horrify people, especially that broad swath of NFL fans who have college-age daughters. Win or lose, this is going to be a shit-storm from which nobody will emerge clean. If you are the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, do you really want the new face of your franchise to be seen as a rapist?

So, now let’s say you’re one of those pointy-heads that wants to go all “head in the sand” over all that stuff. Sure, we can all forget we live in the era of the post-Ray Rice/Greg Hardy NFL, but there still the matter of..wait for it…can this guy even play in the NFL?

It’s been nothing short of amazing to me the sheer amount of mass-amnesia that happened between the end of last college football season and now. Without last week’s game footage to dissect, taking hair-dos like Mel “Count Chocula” Kiper seem to forget Winston was an interception-machine with an impeccable ability to over-look wide-open receivers in favor of guys being double-covered.  I’ve never heard that touted as a formula for success in the NFL, but in Winston’s case, it has the Count Choculas of the world saying Winston is a clear-cut #1 pick.  Did the footage of the National Championship Game somehow end up next to Nixon’s missing Watergate tapes?

While I may be a long-suffering Philadelphia Eagle fan, I almost never agree with Ron Jaworski’s’ football opinions. But, having said that, I have to admit two things. One, the man knows more about what it takes to play quarterback in the NFL than i ever will, and he was right about Johnny Manziel.  He was also right about Cam Newton.  I wasn’t.

Not to mention, has nobody else notice how quiet the rumors are for a trade for the Bucs’ top pick? A few years back, you couldn’t turn around without hearing a new rumble about some “block-buster” deal for the picks where Andrew Luck or Robert Griffin III were taken. Don’t you think it’s funny how nobody seems to want to jump up to get that Jamies Winston pick?

So, when Ron Jaworski is pumping the brakes on the Winston train, I’m prone to listen.