Lavonte David, Devin White Put Bucs Among NFL's Best in LB Rankings
If you're any kind of Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan, you already know that Lavonte David is arguably the best off-ball linebacker in the NFL. He's been in the league's upper echelon as his position for most of his career, despite a severe lack of national attention.
You also know that the Bucs knocked their first-round pick in last year's draft out of the park when they selected LSU linebacker Devin White, who overcame an early-season knee injury to establish himself as a dynamic playmaker at the second level.
David and White give Tampa Bay one of the best linebacker tandems in the entire NFL, and the folks at Pro Football Focus seem to agree, ranking the Bucs' linebacker units as the third-best group in the league:
PFF's Steve Palazzolo points out that David has been in elite company for quite a while now:
Only Luke Kuechly and Bobby Wagner have graded better than Lavonte David’s 91.0 overall over the past three years, and that trio features the only linebackers to grade in the top 10 in both coverage and run defense over that span. David has been one of the few consistent pieces in the Buccaneers' defense since entering the league in 2012 and is capable of making plays all over the field.
White has given the Bucs a perfect running mate for David, another speedy, athletic playmaker with limitless upside after a stellar rookie campaign, as Palazzolo also notes:
The Buccaneers are hoping they found his clone in Devin White, a 2019 first-rounder who got off to a slow start with a 50.6 overall grade last season. An explosive athlete with 4.42 speed, White was an effective blitzer at LSU. Now, it’s just a matter of Tampa Bay harnessing that athleticism within its defensive scheme. White missed 13.0% of his tackle attempts last season, ranking 56th out of 88 qualifiers.
The Tampa Bay defense was a top-five unit in the league over the last six weeks of the 2019 season, and finished the season as the NFL's top-ranked rush defense. This pair had a huge hand in both of those rankings, making big plays of all kinds and helping to mitigate the impact of a turnover-prone offense.
Don't be surprised if this dynamic duo plays a huge part in getting the Bucs back to the playoffs in 2020.
