The Tampa Bay Buccaneers haven’t lived up to their lofty preseason expectations so far this year, and their defensive captains called for a meeting of the minds to get their side of the ball on the same page.
Bucs linebacker Devin White told the media Wednesday that he and fellow linebacker Lavonte David organized a dinner for everyone on their side of the ball this week, hoping to rekindle he chemistry they had during their Super Bowl run in 2020.
“We still want to be who we are, but like you said, they scored 10 points on us in the first quarter and we held them out [of the endzone] until the last drive, but we have to be better – we have to put ourselves in a better position, we have to be real smart at the end when it’s crunch time and we’ve just got to keep doing that,” White said, referring to Sunday’s overtime loss to the Cleveland Browns.
“We had a defensive dinner Tuesday night, me and Lavonte [David] organized it just to bring the guys closer and be able to lean on one another and trust each other and just talk about the tenacity we play with – everything we have to do to help this team win,” White continued. “You know, we’ve got a great defense and we want to show it for four quarters – 60 minutes and man, if we can do that, we can get the job done. Just how we did in Dallas in the first game, give them guys three [points], they give us 20 [points], 18, 16 – we win the game. So, we more so put it on us to try and keep people out of our endzone.”
Tampa Bay’s defense has been impressive for certain stretches, but they’re still struggling to put together four quarters of complete football, just like the offense.
Despite having a losing record at 5-6 heading into December, the Bucs are still in first place in the NFC South, and control their own destiny for a home playoff game.
White and David are hoping that rallying everyone on their side of the ball will help propel them to another postseason run.
[mm-video type=playlist id=01eqbw5aerff6ff182 player_id=none image=https://bucswire.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]
[listicle id=73524]