PHOENIX -- With five weeks remaining for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to make a decision about their first overall pick, coach Lovie Smith gave effusive praise to Jameis Winston during his hour-long breakfast Wednesday with reporters at the NFL owners meetings.
"You start talking to his teammates and they all say the same thing. You talk to coaches that have been around him in the room. You put him on the board, you start talking about his football intelligence. You let him sell himself. He can sell himself."Lovie Smith on Jameis Winston
"What do you want a quarterback to do? Well, you want him to be able to win and get people to believe that you can help be the reason why we win every game," Smith explained. "I think he's done that. He's got a track record -- he's got a Heisman behind him. He's got a national championship.
"You start talking to his teammates and they all say the same thing. You talk to coaches that have been around him in the room. You put him on the board, you start talking about his football intelligence. You let him sell himself. He can sell himself."
Smith reiterated that he is comfortable making Winston the top selection in the draft despite his off-field troubles.
"I said it [at the NFL combine] that with the information I had, I was very comfortable with him," Smith said. "Since then, we've had a chance to spend a lot more time with him and nothing has changed. It's even grown a little more now that I know him better.
"If we decide to go that direction, we're very comfortable with Jameis being the face of our franchise and the quarterback on our football team."
Smith compared the process of choosing a top pick to a football game, saying the team has a "leader" but that it didn't want to make a final decision before pre-draft workouts were completed.
"Most times it's not a tie the entire time. There's a leader most of the time. And we have a leader," Smith said. "But you let the game play out. I've seen teams be in the lead and lose the game, too. You let it all play out, and that's where we are. We'll know once we go through the process.
"But you don't call a winner before the game is over. You go through the entire game. That's what I'm looking forward to. We haven't had individual workouts yet. Our team workout. Looking forward to those. Seeing how the guys handle that pressure."
In addition to Winston, Smith kept open the possibility of drafting former Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota with the first pick, discounting talk that he could be too laid-back to serve as a franchise quarterback.
"I don't buy that. I'm not a part of that group that's saying that," Smith said. "Marcus isn't as outgoing as Jameis -- very few people are. But that doesn't mean that that's a bad thing. He's won just about as many games. He's had a great career in college.
"As I have, and we've had a chance to get him in our building and spend time with him one-on-one, he's very comfortable being in that leadership role and he has a little different leadership style but it's a leadership style that a lot of teams would love."