It didn’t take former Florida CB Vernon Hargreaves III long to earn first-string reps with his new team. When the Tampa Bay Buccaneers hit the field again Wednesday, Hargreaves will get time with the defensive starters, after five practices as a backup.

“He’ll start rotating in there with the first group,” Bucs coach Dirk Koetter told the media after practice on Monday. “As I said in the spring, the guy is a good football player, he’s going to play. He’s doing a nice job, his athleticism shows up every day.”

Buccaneers.com senior writer Scott Smith says Tampa Bay is still figuring out how it plans to use Hargreaves:

Since Koetter stated the obvious during June’s mini-camp, that Hargreaves was too good to be kept off the field, the main issue has been to define the rookie’s specific role. Will he challenge for one of the two starting cornerback jobs on the outside, or will he focus mostly on playing the nickel back position. Alternately, he could eventually end up in a Ronde Barber-type of hybrid role in which he starts on the outside but moves into the slot in nickel packages.

The Bucs are being careful not to overwhelm the rookie.

“We can’t have him play both of those positions at the same time because we’ve got to keep him fresh,” defensive coordinator Mike Smith said. “One of our main goals is to be as fresh as we possibly can be at the first [regular-season] game. So we’re going to move him and some days he’s going to play the corner position and other days he’ll play the nickel position. But he will be working with the first group. Vernon has skills to be a very good player in this league.”

But the team is confident that Hargreaves can eventually handle a hybrid role.

“He’s very cerebral,” said Smith. “He has a great understanding of football – his dad’s a football coach and he’s been around it forever. He doesn’t make the same mistake more than once.”