Bucs safety on why it ‘felt amazing’ to taunt Chiefs’ Tyreek Hill in Super Bowl
Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill’s signature celebration is a peace sign, and he flashed it during the Chiefs’ victory over the Buccaneers in November.
The Tampa Bay defense didn’t take kindly to the gesture and one player used it against him in Super Bowl LV. After a Chiefs drive ended on an incomplete pass intended for Hill in the fourth quarter, safety Antoine Winfield Jr. walked up to Hill and flashed the peace sign.
Winfield was penalized for taunting, but said after the Buccaneers’ 31-9 win it had to be done.
“The taunting, it’s something I had to do,” Winfield said. “When we played earlier, he back-flipped in front of my face and gave me the peace sign. So it was only right that I gave him the peace sign right back to him. At this moment, it felt amazing to be able to do that. I’m not even going to lie.”
Buccaneers linebacker Devin White said the team’s plan was to take it to the Chiefs.
“We talked about beating them bad. We knew they wasn’t physical enough,” White said. “Like, they’re real gimmicky on offense. And man, we don’t play like that. We like smash mouth football. We like coming downhill and getting in them trenches. .... So we knew we wanted to blow them out.”
Linebacker Lavonte David said the Buccaneers also wanted to eliminate the long passes.
“Looking back at what they did to us in a Week 12 matchup, we were able to take away things that they liked to do and we were just able to go out there and have fun,” David said.
David noted that in the first meeting in November, the Buccaneers slowed down the Chiefs in the second half.
“The first game that we played them, man, they got some deep balls over our head. So we were able to eliminate that, and we were in the game, that game in Week 12,” David said.
“We started out that way (Sunday). ... We had that chip on our shoulder. We were able to do our thing and execute.”
This story was originally published February 8, 2021 at 9:51 AM.
