Bucs Safety Ranked Among League Best

The Bucs have been well-represented on Pro Football Focus’ off-season positional rankings lists. Pewter Report has detailed how Tampa Bay has fared each stop of the way. The team has had 13 starters make the list thus far. And now make that 14.

Bucs Safety Antoine Winfield Jr. Nears Top Of List

Winfield Jr. suffered through an injury-marred season. But PFF analyst Zoltán Buday ranked him fourth overall. Buday writes of him, “Despite the Buccaneers winning the NFC South, Tampa Bay’s star safety had a season to forget. Winfield struggled with injuries and played a career-low 601 snaps. He missed 9% of his tackle attempts, which was his worst rate of the past three seasons.

However, Winfield’s career body of work keeps him in the top four ahead of 2025. He was the league’s highest-graded safety in 2023 (90.7) and hadn’t earned a PFF run-defense grade below 85.0 before 2024.”

While the NFL is often a “what have you done for me lately” league, Winfield’s consistency paired with the common knowledge of how much injuries affected him last year give good reason to not drop him too far on a list that featured him at the top spot last year. The injuries he sustained last year sapped him of his trademark explosive closing prowess which limited his playmaking. His passes defensed dropped from 12 to 3, interceptions from 3 to none, and tackles for loss from 6 to 2. And most impactfully he failed to force a single fumble after forcing a league-leading six the year prior.

The Bucs felt the effects of Winfield’s diminished state in other ways. The team allowed an EPA/play on passes beyond 10 yards 0.40 last year, up 10% from 2023.

Winfield Provides Excellence In Multiple Facets

What sets Winfield apart from most of his contemporaries is his ability to excel at all three levels of the field and in every role. As a pass rusher, he has generated a 25% pressure rate throughout his career. From 2020 to 2023 he played at an elite level fitting the run from both the box and from the post. Even last year he was still a plus in this area. In 2022, he showed he could play the slot, an increasingly important role in the modern game, at a high level. And he has always been one of the best centerfielders in the game.

The Bucs play Cover-3 at one of the highest rates in the NFL. As the free safety in this scheme Winfield is asked to cover large swaths of ground. This allows head coach Todd Bowles to keep additional defenders in the box and shut down the run. The Bucs ranked 4th in rushing yards per game allowed and 6th in stuff % per Next Gen Stats.

Bucs Shuffling Safety Lineup

Since 2021, Tampa Bay has continuously changed their starting safety combinations. Prior to that he and Jordan Whitehead formed one of the best safety tandems in the NFL. After general manager Jason Licht allowed Whitehead to walk in 2022, the Bucs tried to leverage Mike Edwards’ turnover propensity into a starting role. But he also walked in 2023. After he played extremely well for Seattle in 2022, the Bucs signed Ryan Neal to a flyer deal, but he struggled mightily. That led to a reunion with Whitehead last year. But he was unable to recapture his early-career form, and a car accident has now put his career in jeopardy.

Bucs safeties Jordan Whitehead and Antoine Winfield Jr. – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

After a strong rookie season in the slot, the Bucs are looking to move Tykee Smith up top. The hope is that the team can find consistency at the position and allow the Bucs to play top-down at a higher level.