Buccaneers linebacker trashes Chiefs, says ‘there was a lot of toe tagging out there’
The Chiefs offense never got on track in Super Bowl LV, losing 31-9 to the Buccaneers.
Tampa Bay’s ferocious pass rush kept quarterback Patrick Mahomes on the run, as he covered nearly 500 yards while attempting to avoid Buccaneers defensive players.
Buccaneers linebacker Devin White joined Fox Sports’ “Undisputed” on Tuesday and was asked if he was surprised the Chiefs didn’t have added pass protection during the game, especially because they were playing without their top tackles.
White said he wasn’t surprised the Buccaneers dominated.
“We knew they was gonna be a cocky team, which they have every right to be, they was the No. 1 offense in the entire National Football League,” White said. “But the thing is, we knew they couldn’t block us. We knew that our front four was gonna dominate them, so they did us a favor. They played right into our hands. We weren’t gonna be that cocky team like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna play them in Cover-1, we’re going to shut ‘em down. Our best guys matched up on their best guys.’ We was going to make it be a team collective win on defense and that’s what we did.
“At the end of the day, they shouldn’t even talk about not having their offensive tackles when they didn’t even help them, they put them on islands by themselves against the best pass rushers in the game.”
Mahomes finished the game with 270 yards passing, while tight end Travis Kelce had 133 receiving yards, while Tyreek Hill ended with 73 yards receiving.
White said all those stats were meaningless because the Buccaneers let the Chiefs have them. He specifically mentioned Kelce and Hill.
“They started gaining yards when we was already up 21 points, we had already gave our little brothers the controllers. ... They just started giving up little B.S. yards, they started giving up little yards at the end,” White said. “So I know everybody praising, ‘Oh, Travis Kelce had 133 (yards),’ but a lot of that came at the end of the game when it was already over. We were sitting back in zone, playing soft.
“Same as Tyreek Hill. It was third-and-20-something and coach (Todd) Boles told us to sit back 15 yards at the stick and he caught it and ran. That gave him a lot of that yards to make him look like he had a decent day. But at the end of the day, we know what went on, there was a lot of toe tagging out there.”
Here are the comments, via Twitter user Dov Kleiman:
This story was originally published February 17, 2021 at 9:56 AM.
