National Football League

Why a former 250-pound lacrosse player is Bucs’ future leader on offensive line

Updated May. 6, 2024 2:34 p.m. ET

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Greg Auman

NFC South Reporter

There are many reasons why the Bucs liked Duke's Graham Barton enough to make him their first-round pick and the first interior offensive lineman selected in the 2024 NFL Draft, but one of them is athleticism rare enough that you can ask his high school lacrosse coach about it.

"He was still a pretty big kid. He just wasn't quite as monstrous as he is now," said Alan Garner, who coached Barton for two years at Ravenwood High in Brentwood, Tennessee. "He was probably 250 pounds when he played for us, and he could have played for us later if he wasn't getting recruited for football, even at his size at 280 or 290, no problem. Obviously with Graham, his footwork is fantastic, and it's about how well you move with the size that you have."

Lacrosse isn't typically a big man's sport — even a defender, which Barton was, is ideally around 215 pounds on the high end. But Barton was still a natural in a sport he grew up playing, requiring mobility and stamina to cover a large playing field.

"It's a big field, bigger than a soccer field, bigger than a football field, so you have to be able to go side to side and up and down," Garner said. "He played defense, but there are times you have to take the ball to the offensive side and be active at a quick pace."

That dual-sport background helped Barton become one of the most athletic offensive linemen ever tested at the NFL Combine. Now measuring 6-foot-5 and 311 pounds, he still ran the 40-yard dash in 4.95 seconds. There's a stat called Relative Athletic Score that combines all of an athlete's measurables on a 10-point scale, and Barton had a 9.99, ranking as the third-highest ever out of 1,500-plus athletes tested at his position.

Barton will be a center for the Bucs, a position he played as a freshman at Duke before moving to left tackle the last three seasons. Four years at Duke reinforced his reputation as a smart, physical leader, something the Bucs were eager to add to their line.

"He's the epitome of what we look for in this culture that we're building here that [head coach] Todd [Bowles] wants," general manager Jason Licht said after drafting Barton. "To not only lead our draft class, but to lead our team, we're all depending on that O-line room, so the addition of him to that O-line room is going to help us out tremendously."

Bowles called Barton a "prototype" player, something the Bucs have wanted at center since they had Ryan Jensen as a Pro Bowl center in 2021 and a tone-setter on their Super Bowl team a year earlier. Jensen missed almost all of the past two seasons with a career-ending knee injury, and he's a player whom Barton has long emulated as he prepared himself to be an NFL lineman.

Licht has compared Barton to Jensen as well as longtime guard Ali Marpet, who retired after the 2021 season, and said Barton's personality is much like that of All-Pro right tackle Tristan Wirfs. Add in third-year right tackle Luke Goedeke and second-year right guard Cody Mauch, and there's a chance the Bucs' offensive line will be entirely populated by Tampa Bay draft picks still on their rookie contracts this fall, giving the team a young but potentially dominant group of linemen.

"Obviously, I haven't played a snap in this league yet," said Barton, 21, who majored in public policy at Duke and interned last summer with a U.S. Senator in Raleigh. "I have a lot of work to do to even be half as good as those guys. [I'm] just excited for the opportunity, you know, and appreciate their belief in me as a player and a person. I'm excited just to get to work with these guys, to prove them right, prove that they made the right decision, and just win some football games and be part of this culture."

Barton said Duke's offensive line was seeking an identity and toughness, and he suggested the nickname "Dirt Devils." After some initial hesitation to compare themselves to a vacuum cleaner ("What does that mean, we suck?"), the nickname took hold with his teammates.

"I kept hammering it, kept referring to it at times and it just kind of stuck," he said. "By the end of the year, we all had Dirt Devil T-shirts. In all seriousness, we just had such a great position room, and that identity was just about toughness and grit and playing through the hard stuff. ... It encompassed all that, really spoke to who we were as a unit."

In addition to protecting Pro Bowl quarterback Baker Mayfield, the Bucs want their line to help fix a running game that has finished last in the league in rushing in each of the past two seasons. They drafted a running back in Oregon's Bucky Irving in the fourth round and a guard in UTEP's Elijah Klein in the sixth, so there could be rookies contributing to a young line as part of new offensive coordinator Liam Coen's scheme this fall.

Barton has his entire NFL career ahead of him, but he approaches the game with a certain urgency to make the most of every practice and every play, something that could permeate to the rest of the line.

"You can only play this game so long, so why waste a snap?" Barton said. "Every rep, foot on the gas. I think that's why I play with that nastiness and violence, because the passion I have for the game and how much I love it, how much I appreciate the opportunity to do this. I think that's where it comes from."

Back in Tennessee, Garner said he remembers Barton as much for his demeanor as his ridiculous size and athletic ability. The year after Barton's last season playing at Ravenwood, the Raptors won the first of three state titles in five years, and Barton was back on their sidelines, cheering on his former teammates. Even through college, he would come back to practice every year, never so famous that he wouldn't return a text message from his former coach.

He was the same person who put everything into every game and every play.

"One play, he takes the ball away from a kid, playing good, sound defense, picks the ball up and at his size, runs down the sideline, clears the ball to an offensive attack guy, and then he jogs back smiling," he said. "That's what sticks out in my mind, the love of the game. And as big as he was, he was always a nice kid, always smiling. That paints a picture of who Graham was."

Greg Auman is FOX Sports' NFC South reporter, covering the Buccaneers, Falcons, Panthers and Saints. He is in his 10th season covering the Bucs and the NFL full-time, having spent time at the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.

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Greg Auman