Luke
Goedeke.
Luke
Goedeke.
Central Michigan· 6'5"· 312 lb
"A Division III tight end three years earlier, Goedeke arrived in the draft with two dozen offensive line starts and the meanest finish in the class — all the technique was still coming."Pre-draft read
Right tackle by trade and a guard by temperament, Goedeke plays with a nastiness that shows up on every rep and is the first thing you notice on tape. A converted Division III tight end, he fires out of his stance in the run game, gets his hands inside quickly and drives defenders until the whistle, finishing blocks well past the point of contact.
In pass protection he sets with good knee bend and a wide base, and the length lets him recover when he is beaten early. The questions are technical rather than physical: his hands can get wide, and he oversets against speed because he has only been an offensive lineman for three seasons. The signature is the finish — he plays angry and he plays through the echo of the whistle.
Gap and duo-heavy run scheme that lets a mauler drive off the ball, paired with coaching willing to rebuild his hand technique.
Year 1: swing starter at guard or right tackle. Ceiling: entrenched starting right tackle who is the tone-setter of the line.
A deep-drop passing offense that leaves him one-on-one on an island against speed rushers before his kick slide and hands are cleaned up.
The projection question was never the athlete, only which of the five spots would let his technique catch up.
Luke Goedeke Right Tackle Highlights
Central Michigan cutups: drive blocks, second-level reaches and the finishing demeanor.
Film Room: Central Michigan RT Luke Goedeke on finishing blocks
Brandon Thorn breakdown of what Goedeke's finish looks like rep by rep.
Goedeke's path is the whole scouting report. He was a lightly recruited tight end who caught twelve passes at Division III Wisconsin-Stevens Point, transferred to Central Michigan, redshirted, moved to the offensive line and by his redshirt sophomore year was starting all fourteen games at right tackle.
The 2021 season is where the grade came from: first-team All-MAC in ten games at right tackle, playing with an aggression that made him stand out on tape against defenses that were not always trying to make him look bad. He is a natural finisher, a genuine mauler in the run game, and the athletic base translated from tight end to the line without much friction. The flags were experience and technique — a converted player with roughly two dozen college starts, a lost 2020 season to a knee injury and hand placement that would need NFL coaching.
Boards had him as a late-second to third-round grade with a split projection: some teams saw a right tackle, more saw a guard whose length and demeanor would play best inside. Tampa Bay took him at 57 to start immediately, and the pre-draft consensus was that the position he ended up playing would decide whether the pick worked.
- 01
Finishes everything
Blocks defenders past the whistle and looks for someone to bury on every snap; the demeanor is the trait teams bought and it never dipped on tape.
- 02
Run-game drive
Fires low out of his stance and generates real movement on down blocks and duo, which made him the point of attack in Central Michigan's best run concepts.
- 03
Athletic base from tight end
Moves in space, reaches second-level linebackers and pulls comfortably, a leftover from a career that started at a completely different position.
- 04
Recovery length
When a rusher wins the corner early, he has the arm length and the knee bend to re-anchor and stay attached rather than losing the rep outright.
- 05
Improvement curve
Went from Division III tight end to first-team All-MAC tackle in three years of offensive line football, with the arrow still pointing up at the draft.
- 01
Thin experience file
Roughly two dozen college starts at the position, so nearly every technical habit was still being formed rather than corrected.
- 02
Hand placement
Hands drift wide and outside the frame, which invites both holding penalties and the loss of leverage against NFL rushers who swipe.
- 03
Oversets against speed
Widens his kick slide too early against pure speed rushers, opening an inside lane before he has diagnosed the move.
- 04
Missed 2020
A knee injury cost him an entire season, shrinking an already small sample at a position where reps are the whole development curve.
— — — positional median (p50)
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- 26repp50
| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Central Michigan | 14 |
| 2021 | Central Michigan | 10 |
| Career | — | 24 |
Offensive linemen have no box-score production, so participation is used. StatMuse lists 14 starts in 2019 and 10 in 2021 for 24 career starts at Central Michigan; he redshirted his first year in Mount Pleasant after transferring and missed 2020 with a knee injury. His 2017 season at Division III Wisconsin-Stevens Point (12 receptions, 132 yards as a tight end) is excluded from the FBS ledger.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A tough, versatile interior starter who plays multiple spots well without being a fixture at any one of them.
The ceiling is a late-developing right tackle who becomes one of the best in the league at the position and gets paid like it.
The floor is a tweener with no natural position who bounces between guard and tackle and never wins a job outright.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Luke Goedeke has played his entire career with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, starting at guard after playing tackle as a rookie. He has been a consistent starter on the offensive line.
Tampa Bay dropped him straight into the lineup as a rookie left guard and it went badly — he started the first seven games inside and looked like exactly what he was, an inexperienced tackle playing a position he had never learned. Then they moved him back outside. From 2023 he became the starting right tackle and stayed there: every game in 2023, thirteen starts in 2024 and eleven in 2025 around a foot injury that put him on injured reserve in September. In September 2025 the Buccaneers signed him to a four-year, $90 million extension through 2029, which is what a team pays a starting right tackle it considers solved.
The evaluation was right about the player and, like Tampa Bay initially, wrong about the position. The nastiness, the finish and the athletic base all translated. What the guard projection missed was that his length and recovery ability were tackle traits, and that his hand technique — the actual weakness — got fixed with NFL coaching rather than being masked by moving him inside. A second-round pick who becomes a well-paid long-term starting tackle at a premium position is an unambiguous hit.
Data note: from Buffalo