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The Buccaneers beat the Jets 24-16 at MetLife Stadium on Friday night in the preseason opener for both teams, per the Buccaneers' own recap. Neither team played its real starting quarterback, and Tampa Bay sat its entire first-team offense, so the final score matters less than who showed up in the roster spots that are actually still open. Three players did enough to change how their teams think about the next three weeks of camp before the 53-man roster gets set.
Geno Smith was scratched with a sore ankle as a precaution coming out of Wednesday's joint practice, so Klubnik made the first start of his pro career instead of the third-string reps most fourth-round rookies get in August. He went 5 of 7 for 56 yards and led two scoring drives, opening the game with a 12-yard completion to tight end Mason Taylor on his very first NFL throw and later beating a third-down blitz with a 21-yard strike to Garrett Wilson. Klubnik was the No. 110 overall pick this spring after 40 career starts at Clemson, and getting real work against a defense that was not sitting most of its front seven, on almost no notice, is a different test than the clean relief-duty reps most Day 3 rookies get in their preseason debut. He passed it.
Allen lost almost all of last season to a knee injury and spent the offseason program rebuilding toward the version of himself who flashed as a rookie. On his third carry of the night he burst through the line and outran the Bucs' second-team defense for a 31-yard touchdown, finishing with four carries for 44 yards. He is still running behind Breece Hall on the depth chart, but a healthy Allen who can hit the second level like that is a real complement to Hall rather than just an injury handcuff, and that distinction matters for how big a role he gets once games count.
Tampa Bay rested its whole starting offense and still needed a pair of undrafted free agents signed back in May to pull the game out. Jalon Daniels started six seasons at Kansas before going unselected in this year's draft, and after Connor Bazelak opened the game 12 of 20 for 72 yards, Daniels took over for the second half and went 10 of 15 for 111 yards, adding a 1-yard touchdown run of his own. Bucs coach Todd Bowles said afterward that Daniels played "very poised" and made the right reads without hesitating, which is exactly the quality a team is trying to find out about a fourth-string arm in August. On defense, Ayden Garnes, an undrafted corner out of West Virginia, read a comeback route, undercut it, and returned the interception 47 yards for a touchdown that tied the game at 10 in the second quarter. Neither Daniels nor Garnes was going to make the 53-man roster on name recognition. A performance like that is exactly what earns a bubble player a real look over the next two preseason games instead of an early release.
Preseason Week 2 runs August 20 through 23, and both quarterback rooms have real questions left to answer before final cuts. The Jets need to see whether Klubnik can produce that same kind of clean decision making once the starters get more of the reps back, and the Bucs need one more extended look at Daniels before they have to set the bottom of their own roster. If either outlook changes how you value a late-round quarterback stash or a deep-league flier, check our rookie rankings and the dynasty cheat sheet for where the depth chart settles from here. None of this shows up in a real box score in September, but Allen's speed and Garnes' interception both looked like repeatable skills, not one-series flashes.
