Buccaneers hold first face-to-face meetings with Winston, Mariota

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who hold the No. 1 overall pick in the 2014 draft, held their first face-to-face meetings with quarterbacks Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota on Wednesday night.

The Bucs are widely expected to use their first-round pick on Winston or Mariota, though at this point, they aren't tipping their hand to which of the two they prefer.

"It would be an insult to sit here after two rounds of draft meetings and watching every play of Lovie (Smith) and I, or Jon Robinson, our personnel director, Mike Biehl, our college scouting director, all of our scouts, to watch every play and say that, 'OK, we have two guys tied at the top,'" general manager Jason Licht said at the scouting combine, according to Conor Orr of NFL.com. "We have a favorite, but we want to let the process play out."

Winston and Mariota didn't participate in the Bucs' 15-minute formal interview, but both quarterbacks spent significant time with Licht and Smith, Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times reports.

"We'll spend time with both these quarterbacks this week,'' Smith said. "But the 15 minutes, we don’t even count that. We’re going to spend a lot of time with both of these guys.

"I think in the end it will be a clear decision who you take. I think it will be obvious who the best player is to lead our franchise, lead our team next year and get out of that cellar.''