Tampa Bay Buccaneers CB Carlton Davis faced Miami Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill on Wednesday, reminding Davis of previous (unsuccessful) battles.
The NFL can be a trash-talking league at times, but as is the case anywhere else, if you talk big, you’d best be able to back it up. If not? Well, you’re going to be respectful when you next face the object of your worst nightmares as a player.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers cornerback Carlton Davis experienced this phenomenon on Wednesday when the Bucs started joint practices with the Miami Dolphins. This is in preparation for the Bucs-Dolphins preseason game on Saturday, and Davis went up against Miami receiver Tyreek Hill in practice. It’s generally not fun to deal with Hill in coverage, and Davis had no illusions regarding who he was going up against.
“He’s a different kind of receiver all around,” Davis said of Hill today. “He brings something to the game that no other receiver does, so to be able to go up against him in practice, especially early on in camp, just helps you fine-tune your skills and your technique. It was pretty good today. I’m excited to go back up against him tomorrow, him and [Jaylen] Waddle. They’re just two fast, twitchy guys that you’ve just got to love and embrace going up against them. Like I said, there’s no other receivers in the league that can do what they do.”
Hill broke up a pass to Hill in the first rep of one-on-ones, which is nice.
“I guess that is a good tone-setter, just starting it off fresh, because usually you’ve got to get into it. You’re a little cold coming off, just starting practice, but I was ready. I’ve been up against him a couple of times in the past so I kind of know a little bit about his release packages and what he brings to the table. But at the end of the day, it’s about competing. It’s about you wanting to win, and I got the best of him on that rep.”
Davis knows the hard way how tough Hill can be to cover.
When Tampa Bay faced off against the Kansas City Chiefs (Hill’s former team) in Week 12 of the 2020 NFL season, he was tasked with covering Hill one-on-one. It did not go well for Davis at all; he allowed three touchdowns to Hill. and 12 catches on 15 targets for 236 yards, 50 yards after the catch, and an opponent passer rating of 158.3 — the highest possible passer rating. The Bucs lost, 27-24.
“Yeah, yeah,” Davis said, when asked whether he remembered that game, and how he and the Bucs recovered to beat the Chiefs, 31-9, in Super Bowl LV. “That’s something that’s going to stick with you. Just having an off game, and then coming back and playing a great game in the Super Bowl, that’s something that’s going to always be a part of my memory, just because it was a pivotal moment in the season both times for us. Going up against him today was a good flashback. It was fun to get out there and just face him. Let’s do it again. As a corner, I feel like you’ve got to have that mentality, to always want work, to always want to go up against whoever puts you to the test. Whoever’s out there. So, it was fun.”
It was not fun back in Week 12. There are very few guys in the league who can cover Hill without safety help, and on that day, Davis was not one of them.
The first Hill touchdown came with 6:59 left in the first quarter. The Bucs were in Cover-3, Davis was playing Hill way off, and Hill just smoked Davis with a little shake off a vertical route. Hill was so fast, that even when he had to slow down to catch Patrick Mahomes’ pass, he was still on the way, smoking.
The second touchdown came shortly thereafter — with 1:42 left in the first quarter. Davis had Hill in the inside left slot in a 3×1 formation, the Bucs were playing Cover-1, and Davis had Hill in a “Man everywhere he goes” situation. You can see how that worked out.
Touchdown No. 3 same with 7:04 left in the third quarter, and… well, I dunno how you defend this.
To his credit, Davis was far more effective in that Super Bowl matchup — then, he gave up just two catches on three targets for 14 yards, four yards after the catch, and an opponent passer rating of 77.0. The Buccaneers had Kansas City’s banged-up offensive line dead to rights, which greatly impacted Mahomes’ ability to make his usual supernatural throws, but Davis still had a much better game — and he wasn’t targeted once when covering Hill.
So, there was no trash talk either way on Wednesday.
“It’s fun, it’s all love out there,” Davis concluded. “We’re just out here competing, trying to get better. We don’t play them [in the 2022 regular season], so there’s no real beef. If it was a team that we had on the schedule it might be a little different. But, no, we’re cool.”
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