The NFL draft is amazing.

Once, the commissioner announced picks in a hotel lobby. Now, it’s a three-day miniseries broadcast on multiple television networks. The reading of 256 names has never been more popular.

This year’s edition ended Saturday, and as much as it has been analyzed and graded, there’s still more to cover, especially from a Buccaneers perspective. Here are some of my takeaways.

Disadvantages are advantages

Malcolm Gladwell writes in David and Goliath that “we think of things as helpful that actually aren’t and think of other things as unhelpful that in reality leave us stronger and wiser.”

When Jameis Winston threw a game-winning touchdown pass to Chris Godwin against the Saints in Week 17, many argued that the play did more harm than good. Because of that play, the Bucs finished 5-11 and ended up with the seventh pick in the draft. If it hadn’t happened, they would have landed the fifth pick.

The way the first round unfolded, I, too, wondered whether that touchdown pass was worth the two draft spots that it ultimately cost the Bucs.

Bradley Chubb — the consensus top defensive end in the draft — could have been theirs. Instead, he went to the Broncos. Quenton Nelson — the consensus top offensive lineman — could have been theirs. Instead, he went to the Colts.

But if the Browns don’t take cornerback Denzel Ward at No. 4, the Broncos don’t take Chubb at No. 5 and the Colts don’t take Nelson at No. 6, the Bills don’t call Bucs general manager Jason Licht and make him an irresistible offer — picks No. 12, 53 and 56 for the No. 7 pick.

That’s a heist. And it doesn’t happen if Winston doesn’t complete that pass to Godwin.

RELATED STORY: Licht robbed the Bills like a thief in the night

Before we name Licht executive of the year, let’s acknowledge that if the Bucs had held the No. 5 pick, they would have taken Chubb and felt pretty darn good about it.

History shows us, though, that even players drafted as high as Chubb often don’t live up to the hype. In general, players drafted earlier tend to have better careers than players drafted later. But the likelihood that a player is better than the next player chosen at his position is only slightly better than a coin flip, economists Cade Massey and Richard Thaler have found.

“A team simply trying to fill a single spot on their roster,” Massey and Thaler write in “The Loser’s Curse: Decision Making and Market Efficiency in the National Football League Draft,” “would be better taking two draws later in the draft than one draw in the first round.”

The touchdown pass took the Chubb decision out of the Bucs’ hands. In time, that could prove to be a gift. No team beats the draft, and beating the draft becomes even more unlikely with fewer picks. Because of the trade down from No. 7 to No. 12 — as well as another trade down later in the draft — the Bucs got four chances to fill their needs instead of one. One way to think about Licht’s maneuvering: He traded the No. 7 pick for defensive tackle Vita Vea, cornerbacks M.J. Stewart and Carlton Davis and safety Jordan Whitehead.

#FollowTheLicht

Even though they entered the draft with the No. 7 pick, the Bucs didn’t hold much draft capital for a team that finished 5-11. They parted with a chunk of it — in the form of an early third-round pick — in the trade for defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul.

According to Football Perspective’s draft-pick value chart, which assigns a point value to each draft slot, Tampa Bay held 44.1 points of value before the draft. That ranked 14th.

Thanks to a series of trades during the draft, Licht ended up with 61.5 points of value. That’s like walking into a store with $100 and walking out with $139 worth of items.

No team increased the value of its draft picks by a greater percentage. That’s especially impressive when you consider that he didn’t part with any future draft picks to do it, as the Ravens did to draft quarterback Lamar Jackson and the Saints did to draft defensive end Marcus Davenport.

The Bills were at the other end of the spectrum. The value of their 2018 draft haul decreased by 25 percent. Only the Eagles saw a greater decrease, but they traded pick No. 32 for pick No. 52 and a 2019 second-round pick.

Note: Ravens traded a 2019 second-round pick for the Eagles' No. 32 pick in 2018. Source: Football Perspective

In terms of total value, the Browns were far and away the leaders. Their draft picks were worth 103.2 points. The Bucs, though, jumped from 14th to fifth, behind the Colts (75.1), Giants (65.8) and Broncos (61.9).

Most unintentionally funny moment

After the draft, Licht talked about how pleased he was to add draft picks in the first-round trade with the Bills, who took quarterback Josh Allen.

“And that quarterback could end up being very good, and at the end of the day that may look like it was a bargain for them, so it worked both ways for us and them,” he said.

He said that. With a straight face.

One projection model says that Allen isn’t going to be very good. Football Outsiders’ QBASE system gave the Wyoming quarterback a negative score, placing him in a select group of first-round quarterbacks. Warning: The list of names that follows might disturb you. QBASE also raised red flags over Mark Sanchez, Josh Freeman, Kyle Boller, Rex Grossman, J.P. Losman and Patrick Ramsey.

So the Bucs solved their problems, right?

Not so fast.

The Bucs feel great about their draft class, and local and national media have been effusive in their praise. Pete Prisco of CBS Sports and Luke Easterling of Draft Wire both gave Tampa Bay A grades.

RELATED STORY: Experts had out draft grades for the Bucs

“I’ve yet to find a GM who says, ‘Oh it went like crap’,” Licht said. “So, we feel great. I will say this. There is more of a better vibe-not that it was ever bad-but it just seems that there are more high-fives and more energy, positive energy, upstairs with all of the coaches and scouts this year than I can remember. So, everybody’s happy right now.”

While the Bucs acquired a lot of potential, there’s not a complete player in this class. Each carries questions and is unlikely to make a major impact right away.

Vea will clog up running lanes, but he’s not a polished pass rusher. Right now, he’s more power than technique. Vea, who played just 62 percent of Washington’s snaps in 2017, might have to come off the field on third downs.

Running back Ronald Jones II’s speed and vision have gotten high marks, but in today’s NFL, where the best offenses feature running backs in their passing attack, his ability to contribute as a receiver, or at the very least a blocker on passing downs, is an unknown. His lean frame (5 feet 11, 205 pounds) also is a concern. A scouting report:

“Doesn’t have great size or the compact strength of elite backs. Must prove he can get the tough yard and not dance to try and break a big play when it’s not there. ... A liability in pass protection, throwing a shoulder instead of moving his feet to take on or even just get in the way of a rusher. Whiffs on his cut blocks against blitzing linebackers.”

Oops. That’s not Jones, that’s LeSean McCoy, a player with which Jones is often compared.

That’s an exciting comp, but consider that McCoy didn’t put up 1,600-yard seasons right out of the gate. He needed a season before he became a productive and reliable starter. McCoy’s 2009 season, in which he gained 945 yards from scrimmage, likely represents Jones’ ceiling as a rookie.

Given the Bucs’ lack of depth in the secondary, you’d expect Stewart and Davis to compete right away. It can take defensive backs some time to get up to speed in the NFL, though, and the Bucs don’t have a good track record of developing players at that position.

Then again, they haven’t had a pass rush in 15 years, or at least that’s what it feels like. A high rate of pressure can mask weaknesses in the secondary, and last season the Bucs had the NFL’s lowest rate. That in combination with the lack of depth contributed to Tampa Bay fielding one of the league’s worst pass defenses.

There’s no better example of what a pass rush can do for a secondary than the Super Bowl champion Eagles. The Legion of Boom they were not. But they were good enough behind a defensive front that consistently challenged quarterbacks.

My grade

I can’t tell you whether the players the Bucs chose are going to succeed in the NFL — not after watching a series of YouTube highlights and reading a bunch of scouting reports.

Here’s what I know: The draft is a lottery played by a bunch of overconfident people. Chase Stuart of Football Perspective found there’s basically no correlation between a team’s performance from one draft to the next. Neil Paine of FiveThirtyEight homed in further and isolated the decisions of general managers. Beating expectations likely is a matter of chance and not skill, he found.

So what are teams and general managers to do? Acknowledge that they don’t know. Acknowledge the role luck plays in the draft and lean into it. That means finding ways to acquire picks in the early rounds, where the better players tend to be drafted.

This year, Licht did just that. He went from owning two picks in the first 94 to holding five in the first 94. While there’s a lot of upside in this class, there’s too much uncertainty to award Licht an A. No one fits the profile of a plug-and-play Week 1 starter. What Licht did, though, was give himself a lot of chances to add good players, and for that alone he deserves a B.

Contact Thomas Bassinger at tbassinger@tampabay.com. Follow @tometrics.