Akheem Mesidor – The Relentless Edge Rusher The Bucs Need

 

SR’s FAB 5 column on the Bucs is presented by Gameday Men’s Health

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INTRO: I did a deep dive into Miami edge rusher Akheem Mesidor, who could be the Bucs’ first-round pick this year. Pewter Report has Mesidor going to Tampa Bay in our latest 2026 7-Round Bucs Mock Draft, which debuted on Thursday on PewterReport.com. Also have some insight on new Bucs offensive coordinator Zac Robinson to share. Enjoy!

FAB 1. Akheem Mesidor Is The Relentless Edge Rusher The Bucs Need

Miami edge rusher Akheem Mesidor was asked at the NFL Scouting Combine what he’ll bring to the team that selects him in the 2025 NFL Draft.

“I think I’m a relentless football player and I’m very intelligent, so I think that’s my biggest edge,” Mesidor said.

Mesidor is an absolutely relentless edge rusher, who understands the pass rush chess match perhaps better than any edge rusher in this draft class. His 35.5 career sacks, which are the most of any defensive player in the 2026 draft, are proof if that.

For a Bucs team that has struggled to draft edge rushers in general manager Jason Licht’s tenure, Mesidor is as proven a pass rusher as Tampa Bay may have the chance to select this year. Pewter Report has the team taking Mesidor with the 15th overall pick in our latest 2026 7-Round Bucs Mock Draft.

Mesidor’s teammate, Hurricanes edge rusher Rueben Bain Jr., is likely to be a top 10 pick on April 23. Yet it was Mesidor who actually led Miami in sacks with 12.5 compared to Bain’s 9.5 sacks in 2025.

When the Hurricanes needed Mesidor the most, he delivered, recording 5.5 sacks in four playoff games, including 1.5 versus Texas A&M, two sacks against Ohio State, and two more in the national championship game on Fernando Mendoza versus Indiana.

“Throughout the season I think I’ve been pretty consistent winning pass rushes and all that different stuff,” Mesidor said. “It’s just once these last couple of games came around the corner, the same preparation, the same mentality – things started falling into my favor.”

Yes, Mesidor will be one of the older prospects in this year’s draft class. He turns 25 on Easter Sunday, April 5. I’ll address that next in FAB 2, but let’s continue to discuss what makes Mesidor such a great fit in Tampa Bay.

For a Bucs team that has drafted too many one-year wonder edge rushers in recent years, including whiffs like 2021 first-round pick Joe Tryon-Shoyinka and 2024 second-round pick Chris Braswell, the chance to draft such a polished and accomplished pass rusher like Mesidor shouldn’t be taken lightly. Mesidor, a native of Ottawa, Ontario, began his career at West Virginia, where he arrived on campus as a 6-foot-3, 250-pound defensive lineman and played defensive tackle for two seasons, where he recorded 9.5 sacks and 14.5 tackles for loss.

He transferred to Miami in 2022, where he had 10 tackles for loss, seven sacks and a forced fumble before suffering ligament damage in his feet the next year that required season-ending surgery after three games in what became a redshirt season. Mesidor returned for his final two years at Miami fully healthy from his foot surgeries, missing just one game out of the next 29. He received a clean bill of health from the medical exams at the NFL Scouting Combine.

After playing defensive tackle at 280 pounds, Hurricanes pass rush coach Jason Taylor, a Pro Football Hall of Famer and legendary Dolphins edge rusher, wanted Mesidor to play on the edge opposite Bain in 2025. So Mesidor dropped 20 pounds and became more of a chiseled 6-foot-3, 259-pound edge rusher with speed, power, a plethora of pass rush moves, and of course, relentlessness.

“On the field, [NFL teams] are going to get a relentless player, somebody who has a deep bag in rushing the passer,” Mesidor said. “Also, first and second down, I can set the edge.

“Off the field, I’m a happy guy – always happy. I’m positive. I’m a people person. I like to think I have great character. Anybody you ask about me, I feel like I’m 100% sure that it will be all positive things. I love helping people.”

The Bucs would love to have Mesidor, whom they formally interviewed at the NFL Scouting Combine, help them with their pass rush opposite Yaya Diaby. In addition to being a bigger, more physical presence than 6-foot-2, 240-pound Haason Reddick, who was a free agent bust last year, Mesidor is also incredibly mature and has the potential to be a future leader in Tampa Bay due to his professional approach to football.

“I took a leadership role at the beginning of the year – in January,” Mesidor said about his final year at Miami. “I started meeting with a bunch of different people and I started organizing player-led walk-throughs. I started grabbing players I thought would be leaders on defense and we had like three dinners where we talked about what we wanted the defense to look like and what it took for us to get there.

“It didn’t just stop there. It didn’t just end with one or two conversations. Throughout the year there were some hiccups, but I would address the team and Rueben would address the team.”

There is a lot to like about Mesidor – the player and the person. He’s mature and he’s professional. And he’s also relentless with a full arsenal of pass rush moves.

This year’s draft class has a lot of pass rushers who I believe could help the Buccaneers, including Texas A&M’s Cashius Howell, Oklahoma’s R Mason Thomas, UCF’s Malachi Lawrence, Illinois’ Gabe Jacas, Michigan’s Derrick Moore and Western Michigan’s Nadame Tucker. But I like Mesidor better than all of them.

If you have followed my draft coverage this offseason, you know that I have a huge draft crush on Texas Tech middle linebacker Jacob Rodriguez. The draft crush I’ve had on Mesidor since last football season when he started racking up sacks and pressures and forcing four fumbles rivals that.

Now, if there’s a way Tampa Bay could trade down a few spots and grab Mesidor while picking up an extra Day 3 pick, that could be used with the team’s second-round pick to trade back up into the latter part of the first round to draft Rodriguez, well I would probably campaign for the Bucs to build a statue of Jason Licht outside of Raymond James Stadium.

FAB 2. The Age-Old Question About Akheem Mesidor

Akheem Mesidor turns 25 on Sunday, April 5, and you might be thinking that Tampa Bay shouldn’t draft a player that old – especially in the first round.

And after interviewing both head coach Todd Bowles and general manager Jason Licht at the NFL Annual Meeting this week, I don’t think the Bucs care.

“Sometimes you are happy to take a player who is maybe entering his early prime years,” Licht said. “We take everything into account. We think about everything. In the NFL you’re not necessarily on a 10-year plan. You do want to win – you want to win early, but you also want to sustain it as long as you can.”

Mesidor’s Miami teammate, cornerback Keionte Scott, turns 25 in August.

Texas Tech edge rusher Romello Height turns 25 on April 13, while Red Raiders defensive tackle Lee Hunter turns 24 in July. Another Texas Tech teammate, middle linebacker Jacob Rodriguez, turns 24 in September.

Western Michigan edge rusher Nadame Tucker, whom the Bucs interviewed formally at the NFL Scouting Combine, turns 26 in June. Yet Tucker only really played one season in college, which was his senior year, recording 14.5 sacks and 21 tackles for loss as the MAC Defensive Player of the Year.

“It kind of depends – it’s a case-by-case basis,” Licht said. “We took Vita [Vea] and he was a little older [at age 23]. The bottom line, we want good football players and it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen in three, four or five years. Of course everybody wants to win now, but you have to ingest everything and take everything into account. At the end of the day you want to take the best player.”

Coming off a disappointing 8-9 season that began with a promising 6-2 start, there is no doubt that Licht and Bowles feel a sense of urgency to win now. If they don’t, Bowles could be fired and Licht would move to the hot seat if there are back-to-back losing seasons in Tampa Bay.

So drafting a more mature, more NFL-ready player like Mesidor could be the right move for the franchise at this place in time. The Bucs defense needs to improve in a hurry after two years of underwhelming play. Drafting older players could lead to more of an instant impact to help Bowles’ unit in 2026.

“You can call me a seasoned rookie,” Mesidor said when asked about his age at the Combine. “I’m coming in more mature with a different approach, a different mentality than a lot of younger guys. I think my age could be a plus, depending on how you look at it.”

At the NFL Annual Meeting, I asked Bowles about his feelings about potentially drafting an older player who might be 24 or 25 this year.

“Tell me when 24 and 25 have become old,” Bowles laughed. “When I was 24 and 25, I didn’t feel old at all. I was doing backflips over fences and jumping off buildings. I understand what you’re saying in football terms, to me it’s not old. It really isn’t old. It’s experience – it really is experience from that standpoint. So whether you are 20, 21, 22 or 25, if you are a good football player, you are a good football player.

“A lot of these guys – you saw Phillip Rivers come back. What was he – 45? And a lot of these guys can play, if you take care of your body you can play for a long time. But we’re so stuck on age – the 30-mark, the 31-mark, or the 25-mark, that we get stick saying, ‘31 – ehhh, he can’t play no more, we have to get rid of him.’ And the guy is at the top of his peak, and he becomes an exception. I think that’s all falsehood and narrative. Football is football, and if you’re good enough to play, you’re going to play.”

So players like Mesidor, Hunter, Rodriguez, Height and Tucker – who all were formally interviewed in Indianapolis – are very much in play this year in Tampa Bay’s draft plans.

FAB 3. Akheem Mesidor Learned How To Be A Pro From Jason Taylor

One last important note on Miami’s Akheem Mesidor. One of the reasons I like Mesidor is his production. He lived in the backfield last year, recording 17.5 tackles for loss, 12.5 sacks and four forced fumbles, as part of his 52.5 career tackles for loss and 35.5 career sacks.

Mesidor said that his position coach, Jason Taylor, is a big reason for his success. Taylor, who coaches the Hurricanes pass rushers, played 15 years in the NFL, mostly with the Dolphins, and recorded 139.5 career sacks, which made him a Pro Football Hall of Famer.

“Just working with J.T. every single day, I think that was the biggest thing for me,” Mesidor said at the NFC Scouting Combine. “The professional approach to the game. The way you prepare. The way you take care of your body – everything. Everything that helps you achieve your maximum potential on the field.

“JT was just tremendous to me. I’m always in his office, always in the facility. JT has a couch and I’m always laying on it and we’re always talking and watching the film. So he’s been he’s been a tremendous help throughout this whole process.”

Taylor groomed not just Mesidor for success at the next level, but also Hurricanes edge rusher Rueben Bain Jr., who is expected to be a Top 10 pick in this year’s draft. Bain recorded 20.5 sacks in three seasons in Miami, including 9.5 last year.

“They’ve got everything,” Taylor said about Mesidor and Bain after Miami’s pro day. “Number one, they have the mental makeup. They love football. Not to take anything away from anybody in the league, but there’s a lot of guys that don’t love ball or have different motivations. There’s nothing wrong with that. Everybody has their different motivations, but those two guys love ball.

“The way they work, their love for football, their love to be successful. They fell in love with the process of being great. You know everybody wants to be great. Everyone says they want to be great. Not everyone falls in love with that process. You know everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Everyone wants to be great, but not everyone’s willing to do what it takes to be great. Those two guys love it. That’s why they’ll be really good.”

There’s no such thing as a can’t-miss draft prospect. But Mesidor’s professional approach to the game, his maturity, his production, the athlete within his 6-foot-3, 259-pound frame and the coaching he received from Taylor have to make him an intriguing edge rusher target for Tampa Bay.

“For me personally, it’s J.T.,” Mesidor said again of Taylor at the Combine. “You know he’s done it for so long, he was tremendous in the league – a legend. He taught me how to be a professional, how to approach the game, how to approach the way you eat, sleep, train – all these different things.

“And he treats us like professionals. Obviously, the younger guys, because they’re just getting into college football, they’re still a little immature. But for a guy like me, he trusts me, and he treats me like I’m a professional.”

FAB 4. Zac Robinson Could Be Liam Coen 2.0 For The Bucs

Bucs head coach Todd Bowles told me that former offensive coordinator Liam Coen was the real deal prior to Tampa Bay’s training camp in 2024. Coen was hired to replace Dave Canales, and with two years of play-calling experience at the University of Kentucky plus a few games at the end of the 2022 season with the Rams, Bowles knew that Coen would be a big upgrade.

Canales was a rookie play-caller, never having done it at any level before. And Bowles and the Bucs found themselves in a similar situation last year with Josh Grizzard, who was promoted from pass game coordinator to offensive coordinator to replace Coen, who left to become the head coach in Jacksonville.

Grizzard had never called plays before, and it showed as the offense slipped in many categories from the heights it achieved under Coen in 2024 when it was a top 5 unit in points scored and rushing offense. To be fair, Grizzard dealt with way more injuries in 2025 than Coen dealt with the previous season. Not only was the offensive line and receiving corps ravaged with injuries, but quarterback Baker Mayfield was banged up for the second half the year and running back Bucky Irving missed most of the first half of the year.

Enter Zac Robinson, who was the Rams quarterbacks coach under Sean McVay while Coen was the offensive coordinator out in Los Angeles. Robinson, who is best friends with Coen, took the job after being part of the firings that took place in Atlanta when Raheem Morris was dismissed after a pair of 8-9 seasons.

The expectation with Robinson in Tampa Bay is that he can essentially be Coen version 2.0 this season. The two offensive minds share the same philosophy and brand of football that they learned from years of coaching under McVay in L.A.

In my conversations with Bowles and Coen at the NFL Annual Meeting earlier this week, I was told that Robinson knows how to effectively marry the run game and the pass game, knows how to get receivers open, and ably deploy both 11 (three receiver sets) and 12 personnel (two tight end sets), as well as the Pony package (two-back sets in 21 personnel) that Coen incorporated in his lone season with the Bucs.

Bowles is feeling the same way about Robinson that he felt about Coen heading into offseason workouts. So much so, that he can solely focus on the defense and give Robinson complete autonomy on the offensive side of the ball.

Robinson already knows offensive line coach and run game coordinator Kevin Carberry from their time together in Los Angeles, and he brought in his former college teammate, Andrew Mitchell, to assist Carberry. Robinson also brought in three former colleagues from the Falcons in senior offensive assistant Ken Zampese, pass game coordinator T.J. Yates and quarterbacks coach Chandler Whitmer, who coached Fernando Mendoza last year at Indiana.

That level of familiarity plus Robinson’s experience as a play-caller should allow him to hit the ground running. Plus, Robinson spent last weekend golfing with Coen in Jacksonville where the two undoubtedly compared notes about Tampa Bay’s offensive personnel and the success that Coen had running that offense in 2024. That certainly helps as well.

As Bowles told me in Phoenix, Robinson’s offensive performance against Tampa Bay in the Falcons’ three wins over the Bucs over the past two seasons were his real interviews. Atlanta scored 36, 31, 20 and 29 points versus Bowles’ defense in those four games.

FAB 5. SR’s Buc Shots

• While Akheem Mesidor seems like a mild-mannered individual in interviews and away from the gridiron, once he’s in pads and on the football field it’s a different story, according to Hurricanes teammate Anez Cooper, who played right tackle and often went head-to-head in practice at Miami.

“Akheem Mesidor and I came in at the same time,” Cooper said. “He came in from West Virginia and we were like rivals in practice. He would get me in the two-minute drill, and I would get him in one-on-ones. We always competed against each and tried to make each other better. His hands are probably the best hands of any defender I’ve ever blocked in my college career. I’m not going to block anybody better than Akheem.

“He plays with an edge. You should see some of the one-on-ones we have in practice. I’m a big trash talker and he’s a big trash talker. So we’ll be going back and forth and competing.”

• The Bucs are so high on David Walker, the team’s fourth-round draft pick last year, that Tampa Bay will likely draft just one edge rusher this year so as not to take many reps away from him when he returns to action from the torn ACL that cost him his rookie season. The Bucs added veteran outside linebacker Al-Quadin Muhammad this year on a one-year deal, so the depth chart at the position is expected to look like this after the draft:

OLB1 Yaya Diaby

OLB2 Al-Quadin Muhammad

OLB3 Rookie – premium draft pick
OLB4 David Walker

OLB5 Anthony Nelson

OLB6 Chris Braswell

Tampa Bay will likely keep just five outside linebackers and values Nelson’s experience, length, edge-setting ability in the run game and special teams ability. Braswell will have a hard time making the 53-man roster this season.

• The biggest non-surprise among the coaches who were fired this offseason in Tampa Bay was quarterbacks coach Thad Lewis. One source told me that he had no idea how Lewis stayed on the staff as long as he did. Lewis was hired by Bruce Arians to be an intern in 2020 and was promoted to assistant receivers coach from 2021-22.

Lewis, a former quarterback at Duke and in the NFL, was kept on the staff by Todd Bowles and moved to quarterbacks coach from 2023-25. That source told me that Lewis didn’t actually coach Baker Mayfield – rather the offensive coordinators in Tampa Bay did. The source also raved about hew quarterbacks coach Chandler Whitmer, calling him a future NFL offensive coordinator.

• Saints Pro Bowl defensive end Cameron Jordan has been a thorn in the side of the Buccaneers for well over a decade. Jordan, who turns 37 in July, is a free agent and may not be back in New Orleans after 15 illustrious Hall of Fame-worthy seasons.

While the 6-foot-4, 285-pound Jordan is a villain to Bucs fans, he is actually one of Akheem Mesidor’s favorite players to study film on.

“Growing up I watched a lot of Cam Jordan because he was a bigger end,” Mesidor said. “I do watch a lot of edge rushers, and not just edge rushers, but guys inside. Like I watch a ton of Aaron Donald on third down rushing tape. He’s one of the best to ever do it. I like to take bits and pieces from everybody and shape it into my own.”