Antoine Winfield Jr. rescued the Buccaneers from disaster (again) in Week 1

Let's spare hyperbole, Antoine Winfield Jr. is the best player on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers roster.

There are arguments for Baker Mayfield, Mike Evans, and Emeka Egbuka after Sunday's stunning debut, but nobody single-handedly changes games as well or as often as Winfield does. We've seen it more times than we can count over the course of his career, and he did his Superman thing again on Sunday in the win over Atlanta.

To be clear, there isn't a win over Atlanta without Winfield's heroics.

With :16 left in the game, Michael Penix Jr. had wide receiver Casey Washington wide open for what should have been a walk-in walk-off touchdown catch. That's where Winfield entered the chat, and promptly shut things down.

It's getting nearly impossible to articulate just how special Winfield is. The impact he has on the outcome of games is otherworldly, as though he's possessed and determined to give us at least one out-of-body experience per game.

It took one play for Antoine Winfield Jr. to remind Buccaneers fans he's worth every penny

Without the heroics of Winfield on Sunday, the Bucs do not win the game. Either it's a walk-in score by Washington that does Tampa Bay in, or it's the closer shot Younghoe Koo gets at tying the game and forcing overtime; there are no alternate timelines where the game ends the way it does.

That's what makes what Winfield does even more incredible. We are living in the timeline that others are pointing to when things like what happened on Sunday happen in parallel universes. We are the alternate universe where everything works out well in the end, and to call watching Winfield do his Superman act a religious experience is somehow still underselling it.

Each time you think of a moment Winfield impacted a game, it's not long before you start to lose track of the times it's happened. There was the goal line punch out in Week 18 back in 2023 that helped the Bucs win the NFC South. Or the punch out that wasn't against Kyle Pitts and the Falcons last year.

Lest we forget the pièce de résistance in Super Bowl 50 where he threw up the peace sign in Tyreek Hill's face.

Winfield received a record-setting contract last offseason but followed it up with an injury-riddled season. Bafflingly, some fans called him out for being overpaid but it's impossible to truly pay Winfield what he's worth in the currency we currently have available.

That's how good he is, and Sunday was a reminder of not only that but how lucky we are to have Winfield in Tampa Bay.

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