It took Antoine Winfield Jr. one drive to remind everyone he's the best safety in the NFL

For a players as good as Antoine Winfield Jr., it's hard to believe he's still achieving career-firsts. That happened on Sunday when Winfield returned to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers lineup for the first time since Week 1.

On the New Orleans Saints first offensive drive, Tykee Smith and Zyon McCollum crunched Chris Olave and forced a fumble. For some reason there was no urgency for Saints players in the area to try and pick it up, which is what Winfield did and took it to the house for a touchdown.

Antoine Winfield Jr. scores the first TD of his career in first game back from injury

There's so much to unpack here, not the least of which is that goes down as the first touchdown of Winfield's career. For all the amazing and game changing plays he's been a part of, Winfield has never taken a house call, and is now just three touchdowns shy of catching his father's career total of four.

Bucs fans know there's plenty of time left for him to do that, which is one of the best parts about this play.

Aside from it being a career-first, the fumble return for a touchdown was a reminder of just how important Winfield is to team's success. Todd Bowles' defense treaded water without Winfield over the last few weeks, but it's so abundantly clear how much better everyone is when he plays.

The fact that it took just one drive for Winfield to reassert his dominance is almost too on-the-nose.

We saw him to do this sort of thing countless times last season, with many of the plays he made directly contributing to the Bucs making the playoffs. If he doesn't punch the ball out at the goal line in Week 18 against the Carolina Panthers, Tampa Bay probably doesn't win the NFC South and doesn't go on the run it did which inspired the success we're seeing this year.

He was given a record-setting contract for a defensive back this offseason, and somehow he's still underpaid. It's impossible to overstate how important he is and the game-changing ability he has and it was a glorious sight to see it back on the field on Sunday.

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