Brooks Irked Over David Snub
January 22nd, 2014
No pineapple for Lavonte (yet).
Joe doesn’t give a damn about the Pro Bowl but he will fight for the right for the NFL to televise it.
Many NFL fans want it banished, but that makes no sense. The game makes cash for the NFL and no fan short of a poor soul in a Bolivian prison has a gun pointed to his head forcing him to watch the game. So why lose sleep that it is on TV? Only an invalid or Tony Kornheiser can’t work a remote.
But Joe does get a few daily Twitters from Bucs fans stomping their feet over Lavonte David not playing in the game, nevermind he has already been selected as an All-Pro, which holds more weight in football circles.
There is actually one guy in the Tampa Bay area who is torqued David has not gotten his free ride to Hawaii to gawk at scantily clad babes, drink weird drinks with umbrellas in them, and play pretend football. That is Bucs great Derrick Brooks.
In chatting with ESPN’s Pat Yasinskas, Brooks sounded off on the absurdity that David has no pineapple in his belly.
“I was very hurt — I wasn’t just disappointed, I was very hurt — to see this young man left off the Pro Bowl football team,” Brooks said. “Now he turns around and he makes All-Pro. I get it. But there’s something about being recognized by your peers that means a lot. That had to sting. I felt terrible for him. He’s undoubtedly not just one of the top linebackers, but one of the top football players in the National Football League.”
If David still is feeling that sting, maybe he can take some consolation in what Brooks had to say about the comparisons of the two that many fans have made.
“To compare him to me is unfair at this point in his career because he doesn’t have longevity on his side,” Brooks said. “Does he have a lot of signs? Of course. He’s done more his first couple years than I did in my first two years. This defense has had to depend on him a lot more than what the defense had to depend on me my first couple of years. I got better Year 3 through whatever. Now we’ve got to wait and see if that happens for him.”
Now don’t go pointing a finger at the fans for the snub of David. In the fan voting, David got more votes than Gerald McCoy and Darrelle Revis. So it was David’s peers and opposing coaches who doomed his trip to the 50th state.
Joe isn’t going to lose sleep over it. Joe’s quite sure David will make quite a few trips to Hawaii before his career is over.
January 22nd, 2014 at 8:07 am
Punish them next year LD!
January 22nd, 2014 at 8:07 am
The pro bowl, just like the BCS system is a crock
of sh*t. The “best” get left out of the discussion.
Goodell should be happy to know that the biggest pro bowl snub ever just happened on hos watch.
LvD is was our best player last year.
January 22nd, 2014 at 8:13 am
Maybe this will be LD’s chip. Certain players carry around with them their whole careers where they were drafted and want to show the teams that passed on them what a big mistake they made. Perhaps this will be in the back of LD’s head for the rest of his career and he’ll be driven even harder to make every player he gets a chance to tackle remember #54 when it’s time for them to think back to who they had the hardest time against.
January 22nd, 2014 at 8:25 am
@ Patrick in VA
I agree entirely….except LVD just seems like the kind of person who doesn’t need the chip to play his very best….somehow, I think we are already seeing his best…but if a chip will get just a bit more out of him….that’s scary good!!!
January 22nd, 2014 at 8:41 am
@TBBF – granted, he’s an extremely motivated kid as is. The stories about him spending lots of time in the film room only to go home and do solo studying on his iPad at home is a testimony to that. I’m merely trying to find a silver lining in what would otherwise be a pretty egregious oversight. If it pushes him and motivates him to be one of the best ever then I think it would be worth it for all of us for him to sit this one out 🙂
January 22nd, 2014 at 8:55 am
Joe-
Off topic but how does JoeBucsfan plan to cover the draft and mocks this year?
Will you be getting input and stream analysis leading up to the draft?
January 22nd, 2014 at 9:13 am
Oh wow! That’s the first time I’ve heard that he got an overwhelming fan vote but was snubbed by his own league. Now that really sucks. Goes to show you that the fans aren’t always wrong. Personally I think they screwed over the 4-3 outside LB’s by grouping them with the 3-4 outside LB which is really a glorified DE. If the format hadn’t been changed I have no doubt LVD would have been eating pineapple.
January 22nd, 2014 at 9:22 am
He’s an all pro. Better accomplishment.
January 22nd, 2014 at 9:38 am
Help LVD from doing all the heavy lifting for the Bucs and get Mosley in the first.
January 22nd, 2014 at 9:44 am
They shouldn’t call them Pro Bowl Linebackers.
They should just call them Linebackers with the most sacks.
January 22nd, 2014 at 9:44 am
Hopefully David pushes this snub deep down and uses it as fuel next year to punish opposing offenses. The Pro Bowl is a beauty pageant.
January 22nd, 2014 at 9:52 am
Even 1% extra from this from LVD would be great!!!
January 22nd, 2014 at 9:58 am
@joe
and what would your opinion be if David played and ruined his career over the NFL making money.
January 22nd, 2014 at 10:01 am
No doubt. What I’m more concerned about is how we’re going to get a chip on the shoulders of the guys not already playing at a high level. It’s easy to say “let’s clean house and start over at every position that isn’t a pro-bowler” but the fact is that there are going to be players here next year that didn’t light the world on fire last year. We simply cannot scrap the whole team. There isn’t enough strong talent walking the streets, we don’t have enough draft picks and it’s not a deep enough free agent pool that we could retool every position. The question now is, how are these coaches going to get them to play at a higher level than they showed us last year.
January 22nd, 2014 at 10:02 am
The only thing that is disappointing about this is that there is no quoted conversation of how Coach Schiano did not want to draft LVD, but how the “rockstar” stuck to his guns and drafted LVD anyway.
January 22nd, 2014 at 10:07 am
@BucsfaninChina
I like that kid Mosley. I feel that The Bucs have too many holes to fill. Trade down a few picks and pick up a 3rd and a 6th and get Mosley. I am pretty sure better linebacker play from the middle will free up LVD to do more damage.
January 22nd, 2014 at 10:10 am
LVD should be there imo but there is always someone that should be there left out.
January 22nd, 2014 at 10:14 am
I have to admit that pisses me off too. I know the All-Pro mention is better, but when I see dudes like Aldon Smith go in as a “linebacker” it make me sick. That piece of crap is an edge rusher(and a criminal). He doesn’t have half the responsibility that Lavontae a true linebacker has on the field!!! Sorry ex linebacker rant…
January 22nd, 2014 at 10:23 am
It can soothe the bruised ego greatly to have a HOF candidate who defined the position speaking out on your behalf.
It’s not’s a snub as much as it is a reflection of the Buccaneers season last year.
January 22nd, 2014 at 12:24 pm
Punishment due!!
January 22nd, 2014 at 12:38 pm
All the voters remember biggest impression of him was the bad call that lost the Bucs the game early in the season. If it was reported correctly or at least fairly that it was such a iffy call he would have been voted in. This will make a him better in the long run.
January 22nd, 2014 at 12:46 pm
well, for what it’s worth, maybe all this snub talk will get his peers to vote him up in the equally irrelevant NFL network “top 100 players” filler that gets drawn out through the offseason
January 22nd, 2014 at 1:01 pm
4-12, that’s why LVD is not getting the nod. I think LVD had a better year than Revis, but you can see that the voting is a popularity contest, and not a who played best vote. This will only make LVD go harder! Kid is a beast.
January 22nd, 2014 at 1:07 pm
Im absoloutely disgusted. This snub is not just a slap in the face to LD its a slap in the face to Tampa Bay. Words can not describe how outraged I am. I LOVE all things Tampa bay. How dare they inzult LD AND our fan base like this. Oh according to ESPN “what fan vase”?
January 22nd, 2014 at 1:19 pm
Clearly the Pro Bowl is a joke.
January 22nd, 2014 at 1:21 pm
It does leave one scratching his head! All-Pro but no Pro-Bowl? If he were on a winning team, he might be up for Defensive MVP.
That’s OK. Let him stay under the radar, so to speak. He’ll be making a lot of people eat crow come next year. Go get ’em Lavonte!
January 22nd, 2014 at 1:36 pm
Generally, Joe mocks the mocks, short of Mike Mayock’s. There is no such thing as “rising” or “falling” in the final days leading up to the draft, short of a guy getting arrested or damning evidence about a guy is released.
Todd McShay had two correct in his first round mock draft. TWO!!! That’s all that needs to be said about mock drafts. … Joe, of course, dives into the draft on various levels.
January 22nd, 2014 at 1:39 pm
Sh!t happens, sadly.
Hey, if the Pro Bowl was such a heinous thing for players, they could have negotiated with the NFL to have hit dropped in the last NFLPA contract talks. But they didn’t, did they?
The Pro Bowl, in a way, helps keep season tickets tempered. Without the millions the NFL would lose without the Pro Bowl TV revenue, the owners would have to get that back someway (hello, ticket price increases).
January 22nd, 2014 at 1:44 pm
seems like not the best go but the most popular
January 22nd, 2014 at 2:11 pm
Pretty much. 🙁
January 22nd, 2014 at 2:30 pm
I’m glad he said that, I’m still irate over it.
It’s ridiculous.
January 22nd, 2014 at 8:06 pm
The truth is in order to get recognition from your peers in the NFL you either have to be a loud mouth fool or play for a big market team. David is to classy to be like Richard Shermanand nobody is confusing Tampa for New York. He might be doomed here.