Who cares about Carmen San Diego, the Buccaneers need to find Devin White and do it fast.
Devin White needs to come out of hiding in order for Tampa to continue its path back to the Super Bowl. While his stats haven’t been all that bad, there is a decided lack of big plays that helped propel him into being a media darling last season. During the playoffs, White was a man on fire, making plays here, making plays there, grabbing a pick, and just plain dominating the middle of the Buccaneers defense. It almost made a fan forget about Lavonte David.
For his part, David has been producing the same as ever. He’s Lavonte making plays and getting things done.
Especially in this game, we need to see some vintage Devin White. He needs to get loose on some blitzes and he needs to blow plays up. In short, he needs to dominate the game. Fans should hear a solid blast of his name and number as the game progresses. It almost makes one think he might have an injury, but we have players on the team who play through injuries, and I would suspect nothing less from number 45.
Through two games, White has 16 tackles. I guess some would say that’s pretty good, but Lavonte has 19. Neither have any splash plays. That needs to change, and it needs to change this weekend.
David needs to force a fumble or two and recover them too. White needs to get back into rushing the quarterback, which led to nine sacks last season. Everybody in media land remarked on how great that was, but the truth is it was one stat for one year. We need to make that happen more often.
We all know the D-line is getting after it, but they need to turn up the sacks, too. As a team, we have a grand total of, count them slowly now, one and now two sacks. Two sacks from this team? Something ain’t right. Maybe the teams have figured out how to get at the Buccaneers. Don’t run the ball; just sit back and throw it. And, throw it on short routes to cut down on the time the QB has possession. How close have we come?
Every week we get to see the near misses or the holds that don’t get called. But we need some downright gruesome pass rushing. We need Vea to take on two or three and leave the wings open for Shaquil Barrett and Jason Pierre-Paul. We need to be able to grab a lead and hold onto it.
Tom Brady and crew have been doing a masterful job of putting points on the board. Every week, TB12 has been able to find the open receiver and get the ball where it needed to be. So far, he has found pay dirt nine times and only given up two picks, one which shouldn’t count on a Hail Mary, and one on a drop. That’s pretty good for any quarterback, and averaging over 30 points per game on offense should mean we get the win.
In the days of the old Bucs, they would tell the quarterback to get 17 points and that would be enough for them to win. That was because Warren Sapp, Derrick Brooks, Ronde Barber, and John Lynch would shut the other team down. It’s not surprising that three of those players are already in the Hall of Fame, and Barber is knocking on the door, look how they performed.
If this defense wants to be included in the discussion of the greatest Bucs defenses of all time, they need to start getting it together. They need more performances like Mike “did I tell you he was a ball hawk” Edwards and just start taking control of the games. There’s no question the talent is there. The deal is getting them to perform, and perform at a level we fans expect. They need to let the fans know that once we take a lead, we keep it. The D needs to impose their will on the LA Rams offense. They need to get hold of them and not let up for even an instant. This is the NFL, if you give a team a break it can easily come back to haunt you.