I’m no NFL draft geek, but I do follow along to a point. I at least watch the first round, and check in periodically after that.

Which brings me to last weekends draft,  particularly that of the hometown Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The franchise opted to select what it perceived as a franchise quarterback with the 17th pick in the first round: Josh Freeman, a big, strong-armed kid out of Kansas State.

I like the pick. Not so much because I like Josh Freeman as a player — I’ve only seen highlight reels. And over the last couple of days listening to the gnashing of teeth on sports radio, I’ve come to understand that he has some flaws in his game — a poor completion percentage in college, a high number of interceptions — that make him a major risk, and a potential bust.

I like the pick because the new Bucs braintrust has shown that it’s sick of the same-ol’-same-ol’.

This article appears in Apr 22-28, 2009.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...