Most disappointing Buccaneers player in 2022 a major surprise

The Buccaneers have experienced a lot of disappointments through the start of the 2022, but one of the biggest as an individual has been Vita Vea. No pun intended.

A few months back, it looked like Buccaneers defender Vita Vea was going to work his way onto an All-Pro team in 2022. Those hopes are almost assuredly dashed at this point, and the even larger question right now is how this is even happening in the first place.

For lack of a better way of putting it, Vea has been shockingly-bad for the Buccaneers through the tough start to the season.

Some fans may try to argue and use 2.5 sacks and the likelihood that Vea will set his own personal record for sacks in a season as a way to show that the play hasn’t been that bad, but sacks never tell the whole story, and stats as a whole without context don’t lend themselves well to arguments like this.

Vea is doing very little to put pressure on quarterbacks or generate hurries, he is getting blown off the line of scrimmage (like the rest of the defensive line) against the run, and Todd Bowles is still dropping Vea into shallow coverage in one of the stranger developments on defense.

This is not the player or the level of play that we have come to expect over the past few years. This is also not the same player that just earned a major extension with the Bucs.

Given what we have seen so far, Vea isn’t the only player to harp on, but his ceiling is so high that play like this just comes across as uncharacteristic.

Hopefully the heart of Tampa’s defense can find a way back to his prior form sooner rather than later and get this team back on track for a successful end to the season.

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