Freedom Rings For Antoine Winfield, Jr.
May 30th, 2023
Safety Antoine Winfied, Jr. is always quick with a smile, but his grin seemed to have a little extra juice today at One Buc Palace.
Winfield was asked following practice about head coach/defensive guru Todd Bowles relocating him back to a safety-only role following lots of time at nickel cornerback last season.
“I’ll probably be in the middle of the field more. So I like having that freedom to just roam around and be in the middle of the field and have that presence all over,” Winfield said.
Specifically, Winfield will be at the free safety position.
Bowles noted earlier this year that he liked how Winfield played at slot corner but given that Winfield is a ballhawk, Bowles believes the Bucs need more turnovers and that goal is best achieved with Winfield playing more center field.
Don’t worry, Bucs safeties coach Nick Rapone later added, Winfield is the Bucs’ best blitzer among defensive backs and he’ll be doing plenty of that this season.
May 30th, 2023 at 1:25 pm
He struggled in the slot. He’s much better roaming the middle of the field. He made plays in college as a true FS. He’s gonna want to be paid soon.
May 30th, 2023 at 1:35 pm
Yup didn’t like putting Winfield in the slot as it takes away from the impact he can make as a safety, BUT I can understand the logic behind it being keeping you’re best talent on the field considering with Logan Ryan & Keanu Neal we had a surplus of bodies at safety(until we didn’t due to injury) to try that out.
May 30th, 2023 at 2:14 pm
I just hope he doesn’t get any more concussions
May 30th, 2023 at 2:21 pm
Beej same bro. He’s had too many already. I’m being selfish here but I don’t want him to stop playing.
May 30th, 2023 at 2:59 pm
@Dooley. The slot position has become more important as teams move to more of a spread offense. It seems like we’re needy at that position. If I’m an OC, I would motion my X to the slot. Davis and Dean aren’t slot corners. We should’ve been moving Evans around last year, but that’s a different story lol
May 30th, 2023 at 3:30 pm
@Bucsfan13
Yup the Nickel is basically a starting position, but I think we specifically signed Logan Ryan to make the experiment at Nickel with Winfield more plausible, but to me it was almost putting a too much on his plate asking him to moonlight at both positions. Especially after Ryan went down.
IDK if we’re needy or if we’re just waiting to see who on-hand emerges to earn that job. McCollum & Gardner were both additions from mid-majors that had plenty of space to develop. We know about McCollum dang near having a perfect RAS score and Don Gardner scored an 8.11 RAS score which isn’t shabby at all for a UDFA out of South Dakota State. My thing would be who’s got the hips, brains, eyes, and feet to be able to take on the task of covering slot WRs with any consistency, which is the “need” we should be looking to address there.
May 30th, 2023 at 4:22 pm
leave it to Ira to ask the question about getting your hands on more balls, lol
May 30th, 2023 at 5:02 pm
We could use more ints.
May 30th, 2023 at 6:38 pm
This will be the year the Bucs pay him or let him go down the road. If he continues to get hurt, I don’t know how you pay him if he continues to be hurt or gets anymore concussions. If White has his contract year, you’ll have to pay him and if Wirfs goes to LT and kills it, you’ll be paying elite LT money. Then if Baker does what we hope, he’ll need a hood contract too. Winfield’s year could be a huge domino for others
May 30th, 2023 at 6:47 pm
Winfield is our modern day Ronde Barber, and will excel no matter where you play him.
May 30th, 2023 at 8:09 pm
I wanna see Zyon McCollum (sp?) on some blitzes. Dude can fly, assuming he takes good angles.