Is Jameis Winston Ready for Complete Control of an NFL Offense?

The first pass of Jameis Winston's professional career was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. It was not the start the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were hoping for from their franchise quarterback of the future.

Still, by season's end the No. 1 overall pick in the 2015 NFL draft had passed for 4,042 yards. The progress that Winston showed as a rookie impressed head coach Dirk Koetter, who has reportedly decided to take off the training wheels and turn Winston loose.

The question now becomes whether that will allow Winston to best use an impressive array of passing-game targets or unleash the quarterback's least desirable trait—a penchant for turning the ball over.

As a whole, Winston's first NFL campaign was widely considered a success. His passing yardage ranked third-best all time for a rookie quarterback, he threw seven more touchdowns than interceptions, Winston's passer rating was over 80 and while six wins is nothing to do cartwheels over, it looks a sight better than the two wins that came the year before.

Given all that, it would only seem natural that coaches would want to put more on Winston's plate in 2016. And sure enough, that's exactly what Koetter told the Talk of Fame Network (via Josh Alper of Pro Football Talk) the team plans to do:

"

Of course, now that Jameis knows what to expect — he’s been through a full NFL season offseason, preseason, regular season — everything’s not new to him. Sure, we’re giving him more and more. We want him to test the boundaries. And you can always reel it back it when you get to the season and see how it’s going.

"

It isn't hard to see why it's a course of action Koetter would favor. The pieces appear to be there for a potent offense. Only Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings ran for more yardage than Doug Martin's 1,402 yards last year. Mike Evans has hit the 1,000-yard milestone in both of his years in the league. In veteran wideout Vincent Jackson and young tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins, the Buccaneers have viable secondary targets.

Add in a line that ranked in the league's top half in both run blocking and pass protection last year, per Football Outsiders, and the ingredients are there for tasty yards and delicious points.

Koetter also indicated to Robert Klemko of The MMQB that he's going to spice things up by adding more no-huddle concepts, which were a staple of Koetter's tenure as head coach at Arizona State: "Jameis is a good communicator at the line, good at the no-huddle, studies like a wild man, and that’s what we love about him. I trust my judgment, and I trust the judgment of our coaches. We’re around Jameis every day, and we know what he’s capable of."

There you have it. The meat's there. The vegetables. Even some no-huddle paprika to spice things up.

The Buccaneers just need someone to stir the pot, a chef to put everything together for them. That's why they made Winston last year's first pick to begin with.

Winston, for his part, is on board. He insisted to Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times he's ready and willing to become a more aggressive quarterback in Year 2, including more no-huddle looks.

"I think when you’re playing fast-paced, the more you can cut out thinking, the better you are," Winston said. "Especially for the young guys that we had. You get up there, you call the play and you go with it."

As Winston told Stroud, it's part of the natural progression under center:

"

The more comfortable I get with the offense, the more stuff they can give to me. The more stuff they can put in my hands to go out there and execute. I’m just paying attention to my keys and trying to go through the right progression. I think just executing the simple things is the right thing to do. You’re never going to panic in those situations, but I’m pretty sure there will be things down the road that we can put in more protections or more audibles.

"

Still, in Winston's statement also lurks the biggest reason why slamming the gas pedal to the floor with the youngster in 2016 might not be the best idea.

"Executing the simple things."

If there was a prevailing knock against Winston in college, it's that he sometimes had trouble with that. He made poor decisions with the football—decisions that led to turnovers.

OK, so he didn't do anything that bad in his first year in Tampa. But for a time, after Winston threw seven interceptions over the season's first month, it appeared the turnover issue had followed Winston from college to the pros.

Winston would go on to throw only eight more picks over the last 12 games of 2015, but that number is a bit misleading. According to charting done by Football Outsiders, seven potential Winston interceptions were dropped last year—the second-most in the NFL.

The Buccaneers just aren't a good enough team to absorb many of those sorts of mistakes. Yes, the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl last year with three more regular-season giveaways than Tampa's 28. Pittsburgh made the playoffs with the same amount.

But the Buccaneers defense isn't on the same level as Denver's. And Winston, well, he isn't Ben Roethlisberger...

Yet.

This isn't to say the Buccaneers shouldn't open things up this season. They may well have to out of necessity. Back-to-back big years from running backs are more exception than rule in today's NFL.

And even if Martin does have another solid season, it will mean about as much as that did in 2015 if the Tampa passing game doesn't step up and do its part.

But rather than having Winston test the limits of the Tampa offense, Koetter would be best served by testing Winston gradually. Move toward the deep end of the pool a step at a time rather than throwing him in and hoping for the best.

It's no knock on Winston. If you throw Winston into the deep end, odds are he'll get it figured out. He showed the ability last year to be a more than capable NFL starter. But there are going to be bad plays too. And when Winston makes a bad play he makes a bad play.

Bad plays the Buccaneers can't afford if they want to even sniff the playoffs this year. Rebuilds get done on a dime nowadays. Fans don't want a three-year plan. They want wins.

That leaves Koetter on something of a tightrope in reverse. Moving forward by holding Winston back a bit. Winning now by not putting pressure on Winston to win now.

Winston was at his best last year when he was executing an admittedly watered-down offense. He's often been at his worst when the pressure to make a play caused him to try to improvise a square peg into a round hole.

Show him more. Give Winston more rope calling signals. More progressions on some routes. But before you throw the kitchen sink at him, show him something in a nice side-by-side refrigerator. Maybe a dual-fuel range/oven combo.

One step at a time. And at each and every step along the line, hammer home the one thing Winston cannot do if he wants to have a long career in the NFL: force throws that wind up as turnovers. The list of quarterbacks who were successful doing that isn't long.

It may well be that Winston's ready to take complete control of Koetter's offense. But if he isn't, the Buccaneers' first game of 2016 will wind up looking a lot like the last game in 2015—a sloppy affair in which Winston turned the ball over twice and the team got blown out.

So Tampa had better make sure one way or the other before they hit Week 1.

Gary Davenport is an NFL analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter @IDPSharks.