TAMPA, Fla. — It wouldn’t be fair to say the Buccaneers have never drafted an elite pass rusher on the edge.

Tempting, perhaps. Mostly accurate, for sure. But not entirely fair.

Fifty years and 468 draft picks ago, Tampa Bay used the first pick in franchise history to select defensive end — and future Hall of Famer — Lee Roy Selmon. He retired more than 40 years ago and the dearly missed Selmon remains Tampa Bay’s all-time sack leader.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean the Bucs have been devoid of a pass rush for five decades. They signed Simeon Rice as a free agent in 2001 and went on to win a Super Bowl. They traded for Jason Pierre-Paul and signed Shaquil Barrett and won a second Super Bowl. They drafted Warren Sapp, who was an elite pass rusher from the interior of the line, and found another Hall of Famer. Gerald McCoy and Vita Vea are examples of two other outstanding pass rushers from the interior.

But finding that special edge guy in the draft? A true disruptor of the passing game? Well, let’s just say Gaines Adams, Regan Upshaw, Eric Curry, Keith McCants, Ron Holmes and Booker Reese didn’t work as well as expected.

In today’s pass-happy NFL, finding a game-changing edge rusher is like coming up with a franchise quarterback. Everybody talks about it, everybody looks for it, but most teams rarely pull it off.

Which is why you might want to pay attention to Rueben Bain Jr. in the season opener at Cincinnati on Sunday.

He has yet to play a down in a regular-season game so it’s premature to talk about Bain in these terms but, goodness, it’s been a long time since the Bucs had a rookie with this type of potential on the corner of the defensive line.

“He’s way more developed than any rookie I’ve gone against or seen as a pass rusher,” said Bucs tackle Luke Goedeke, who lined up opposite of Bain for much of training camp. “I can’t wait to see him on Sundays, to be honest with you.”

Part of Tampa Bay’s problem in recent years is it hasn’t selected high enough in the draft to get that can’t-miss sack artist. They picked Joe Tryon-Shoyinka late in the first round in 2021 and Chris Braswell in the second in 2024, but neither was scary enough to keep quarterbacks up at night.

Truthfully, the 2026 draft didn’t hold a lot of promise either. Texas Tech’s David Bailey and Bain were considered the top two edge rushers, but Bailey went No. 2 to the Jets and Bain was expected to be gone before the Bucs chose at No. 15. Yes, there was chatter about his relatively short arms and smaller hands, but finding Bain on the board at No. 15 seemed like a hopeless fantasy.

Nonetheless, the Bucs scouted him. They probably lusted after him but, for much of the spring, didn’t have much hope of landing him.

“A lot of times, you’ll hear the hype and you’ll put on an early tape and think, ‘Ah, this guy is good, but we’ll see,’” said Bucs assistant general manager Rob McCartney. “With Rueben, it was pretty obvious. It was more like, ‘This guy is going to work out.’ So, the closer we got to the draft and you started hearing about arm length and some of the other stuff, we were thinking, ‘Shoot, you don’t want him, we’ll take him.’

“We’ve done a good job, I think, of not boxing ourselves in on guys that maybe don’t meet other teams’ criteria. Guys that are just really good football players who have great feet, great instincts, guys that are tough and have the right character for leadership and work ethic. He checked all of those boxes.”

How valuable can a guy like that be? Look at it this way:

The top-12 guaranteed contracts in the NFL were signed by quarterbacks. The next four all belong to edge rushers.

If quarterbacks dominate the league, then pass rushers are the defense’s antidote.

So, yes, everyone wants them but, no, there aren’t enough to go around. That supply-and-demand issue sometimes leads to front offices falling in love with the wrong guys. They get caught up in the measurables at the NFL combine or they don’t account for weaker competition when studying gameday performances.

“You can go through two years of college and never face an offensive lineman who will last long in this league, so you need to keep that under consideration,” said run game coordinator Larry Foote. “You’re not just going to run around linemen like you do in college. It takes guys a few years to understand how to rush in this league. You’ll see the potential, you see the things that make Bain and some of these guys unique.”

“They got power, they got speed. They’ve got a bona fide fastball, but it’s the guys who learn how to throw off-speed pitches and changeups. Those are the guys with 10 or 15 sacks. Those are the guys that offenses need to build their gameplan around stopping them.”

And there’s the hope.

Once you get an offensive coordinator worrying about having running backs and tight ends providing blocking help for an offensive tackle against an elite pass rusher, you’ve already disrupted a scheme. And when quarterbacks are worried about getting the ball off quickly, that’s another weakness in the game plan.

The last time the Bucs had a pass rusher with more than 10 sacks — that was Barrett in 2021 — was also the last time they had a defense finish in the top five of the NFL in scoring.

It’s probably not advisable to put that type of pressure on Bain. He did, after all, just turn 22 a few days ago. He looked great in college, he impressed teammates and coaches in training camp. But there’s a world of difference in facing NFL tackles when the scoreboard is turned on.

On the other hand, it’s been a long time since the Bucs had a rookie with this kind of potential on the edge of the defensive line.

“He’s a freak. His bend, his motor, his determination, everything,” said tackle Tristan Wirfs.

“I wouldn’t want (to be blocking) him. It’d be tough. You’re going to have a tough day if you’re blocking (No.) 3 out there.”

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