The poor play of former Tampa Bay Buccaneers Top 10 pick Devin White helped change the fanbase's mind about linebacker play. Box score numbers like tackles and sacks, which White was always tallying during his time in pewter, are not the be-all and end-all for evaluating linebackers.
White, who has bounced between the Eagles, Texans, and Las Vegas Raiders since leaving Tampa Bay, has a starting role again despite some play on the field that may not warrant him getting such a big role.
Still, Ian Rapoport put together a very odd post that Bucs fans have been savaging on Tuesday, as he claims that White should get some consideration for Comeback Player of the Year due to his performance with the Raiders.
So the guy who is at the heart of one of the worst defenses in the league and got his own teammates so ticked off that it nearly started a scrap on the sideline should be in the running for DPOY? Either that post came straight from an agent, or Rapoport is box-score watching.
Ian Rapoport posts puzzling defense of former Bucs linebacker Devin White
White is second in the league in tackles just one year after it looked like the former LSU star was never getting on an NFL field again, so he deserves some credit for that achievement. However, the advanced stats show that the White who ran himself out of Tampa is the very same one who is putting forth middling efforts in Las Vegas.
Pro Football Focus ranks White 80th out of 88 qualified linebackers this season, coming in 81st as a run defender and 72nd in coverage. There is nothing he does particularly well, and the Raiders likely would have moved on if they had someone else who could play at a starting-caliber level.
While Bucs fans aren't on very firm grounds for taking shots at White due to how bad their linebacker room has been since they got rid of him, his entire NFL career has been a living experiment into the notion that just finding how many tackles each linebacker piles up is by no means a measure of how good someone is at playing the position.
If simply getting a ton of tackles is all that needs to happen for a linebacker like White to get some sort of official praise from the shield, Lavonte David has a few trophies that he needs to reclaim.