Every year, the NFL draft class is deeper at some positions than others, which can impact how each team approaches their strategy across all seven rounds.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are no exception, and general manager Jason Licht knows that his team has to balance the opportunity to take advantage of those deeper groups, while also making sure they don’t pass up the best talent at the top of the board, regardless of position.

“I guess when you feel certain positions are deeper, you feel maybe if you have a higher pick, maybe that’s a position of need but you can maybe take another position because you can still get one later on in the draft,” Licht said last week during his annual predraft press conference. “But, at the end of the day, you still want to take the best player – the player that you had the best feel for, especially collectively as a group. You wouldn’t want to pass on a player, regardless of position, if you have a lot of love for him – knowing even if that’s a deep position.”

Licht says that trying to find the best overall talents while also minimizing risk is a priority, and also that perceived depth can sometimes fail to pan out down the road.

“None of us know – we don’t have a crystal ball here,” Licht said. “You can feel like a position is deep and then you can look back on it three years from now and maybe it wasn’t so deep. It’s just the way it works. You try to do your best to minimize the risk. We have to rank them somehow. We just take the best player, usually at a position that you feel is a need, and we have a lot of needs.”

This year’s draft appears to be loaded at wide receiver and along the offensive line, while the safety and linebacker classes look a bit weaker than usual, especially in terms of top-end talent.

We’re less than two weeks away from finding out how all of that will impact the way Licht and the Bucs approach things this time around.