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The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had quite a roller-coaster 2022 season.
The Buccaneers managed to win the NFC South for the second straight year, although they finished with a lowly 8-9 record in regular season play. From injury woes to the sluggish production from the offense during the middle of the year, not much went Tampa Bay’s way over the course of the campaign.
Buccaneers linebacker Lavonte David, who recently re-signed with the team on a reported one-year, $7 million deal, featured in all 18 of Tampa Bay's games last season. The one-time Pro Bowler was not much fond of the Buccaneers' 2022 campaign.
“I would say the whole season — not just the end of the season — everything was so up and down and wasn't consistent,” David said during a press conference on Thursday. “We're a better football team than what we displayed.
“That playoff loss, losing at home in the wild-card game, we basically played the worst game of the season. We [were] outmatched, we didn't play the way we know how to play football. Obviously, that factors in.”
Buccaneers general manager Jason Licht has been retooling the roster as of late. For one, he signed Baker Mayfield to a one-year free agent deal to have him compete with Kyle Trask for Tampa Bay’s starting quarterback job for the 2023 season.
David also offered his stamp of approval to the offseason moves Licht has so far completed this year.
“I'm comfortable in what we've got,” David said. “We've got a majority of our locker room still there, still intact. We lost some key pieces, obviously, but a majority of our locker room is still intact, and that's something that I really like.
“Obviously, we added a quarterback, and then we added another guy on the defensive line. We lost some guys on the defensive line and then added Jamel Dean back, so that was a big thing for us, for the organization. I feel like we still are going to be a confident group.”
The Buccaneers have watched multiple players who featured for them last year sign free agent deals elsewhere, including safety Mike Edwards, who agreed to a one-year contract with the Kansas City Chiefs last week.
