PR Roundtable: Should Bucs Bench Devin White When He Returns From Injury?

In fact, if Devin White does play this Sunday – but I don’t think he will – at Atlanta I firmly believe that will cost the Bucs a chance to win because he’s become such a liability in run defense. I take Pro Football Focus grades with a grain of salt, but White ranks No. 81 out of 82 graded linebackers by PFF with a 39.2 overall grade and a 31.3 run defense grade. That’s right. According to PFF, White is the second-worst linebacker in the entire NFL.

In this case, PFF seems right on the money.

J.J. Russell, a long-time practice squad linebacker, had a better game on Sunday against the Panthers as an emergency starter than White has had in any of his games over the past two months. Russell finished with seven tackles (six solo), four QB pressures and one sack. On the heels of this game plus a standout preseason, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing more Russell down the stretch.

But if Lavonte David and rookie SirVocea Dennis are healthy enough to play this week, and I’m hearing they could be, that should be the starting duo at inside linebacker. Russell should be the No. 3 inside linebacker ahead of K.J. Britt, and certainly ahead of White.

The Bucs should be wanting to get an extended look at Dennis, a fifth-round pick, to see if he can be a potential starter in 2024, or if the team will need to seek an upgrade in free agency or the draft. And if the 33-year old David’s groin injury flares up I wouldn’t hesitate to play Russell some more to see where his potential ceiling is. The Bucs should already know to try to re-sign David for one more year. He’s had an exceptional season.

And we already know that Devin White is not in the team’s future, so any more snaps for him is actually doing the Bucs a disservice down the stretch. White would not necessarily help this team stay alive in the playoffs this year with his poor play, nor would it help Tampa Bay’s inside linebacker evaluation for starting options in 2024.

Matt Matera: Devin White Should Be Benched, But Todd Bowles Would Never Allow It

It’s probably best for Devin White to sit out the rest of the season under the guise of a foot injury. There’s no doubt that White isn’t fully healthy, but his play has declined week in and week out. He won’t be back next season, and if he doesn’t play another snap, he can save a semblance of belief from those on the outside that he’s still an all-world talent. That way some team might be silly enough to give him the money he’s asking for.

The Bucs would be better off if White never played again in Tampa Bay. However, Todd Bowles would never allow it. Bowles and White have a great relationship to the point where Bowles will always defend White’s poor play, no matter what. And that’s part of the problem. White gets coddled by Bowles at times and won’t learn from the mistakes because no one is holding him in check.

Preferably, I’d like to see SirVocea Dennis with a chance to line up next to Lavonte David. They drafted Dennis in the fifth round to potentially be the future for the Bucs at inside linebacker, so why not start it right away? I also wouldn’t hate seeing a couple of reps for J.J. Russell, who held his own last week against the Panthers. K.J. Britt is fine as a special teams player, but I don’t need to see him on defense.

The ship has sailed for White in Tampa. There’ll be fond memories of his come up in the league, helping the Bucs win a Super Bowl, but some may have that soured a bit by how he handled this offseason. Moving ahead, the Bucs will have Dennis at the helm. Obviously everyone would like to have Lavonte David back, though there could be a different free agent that’s running the show next season.

Bailey Adams: Yes, Bucs Need To Get A Look At The Future

Todd Bowles would never bench a healthy Devin White, would he? But he should consider it. I’d lean toward playing SirVocea Dennis over White, and it’s not because I think Dennis is the better player right now. White probably gives Tampa Bay a better chance to win, even with his flaws.

The real goal here would be for Dennis to get experience and the Bucs to get a proper evaluation of him. An extra bonus, at least in a perfect world, would be Dennis making fewer mistakes than White — even if he doesn’t quite have the same ceiling in terms of play-making ability.

Ultimately, the Bucs aren’t going anywhere this year and they need to know what they have in their 2023 fifth-rounder. Fast forward to the offseason. Tampa Bay won’t (and shouldn’t) pay White the kind of money he wants.

Meanwhile, Lavonte David turns 34 in January. So, at best, the team is letting White walk and bringing David back on another one-year deal. If that’s the case, who plays next to David?

Dennis would surely get the first crack at it, so why not give him the chance to solidify his spot now? At the very least, with enough of a trial run for him over the next few weeks, the Bucs can go into the offseason knowing what they need at linebacker with some info.

Generally speaking, Tampa Bay’s decision-makers would be pointed toward one of these scenarios:

-Dennis plays well + David comes back = only really need linebacker depth (ideally a future starter for when David retires)

-Dennis struggles + David comes back = need a starter alongside David while Dennis develops for another year

-Dennis plays well + David retires = need a starter to pair with Dennis for the foreseeable future

-Dennis struggles + David retires = nightmare scenario of needing to replace two starting linebackers

This decision for me essentially comes down to this: If White isn’t going to be here in 2024, what good does it do to play him down the stretch of a season that’s really going nowhere when the team has a rookie linebacker it needs to evaluate?

Josh Queipo: My Patience With Devin White Has Run Out

For those of you Pewter People who have followed my journey with PR, you should have been able to glean two things about me. One is that I am usually the slowest of the staff, and Buc-world to agree change is needed when it comes to starters. I was the last to agree that Ryan Neal should be sat down. I was the last to say Yaya Diaby had earned a right to more snaps than Joe Tryon-Shoyinka. I still think Baker Mayfield should continue to start over Kyle Trask at quarterback.

And two, you probably know I have long thought Devin White should have already been gone from Tampa Bay. My second article with Pewter Report advocated for the Bucs to NOT pick up his fifth-year option. So, I am what you might call in a Robert Frost situation here.

I am firmly in the camp of finding out what the Bucs have at ILB with SirVocea Dennis and J.J. Russell. With many of the other “position battles” my argument has been that the Bucs still believe they are in contention for a playoff spot and the players being considered for benching still provided the highest floor for go-forward production. But with White the floor is very low.

He’s not good in run defense. White’s average depth of tackle in the run game is 4.2 yards past the line of scrimmage. That is 12th-worst in football among linebackers. He’s not good in coverage routinely ranking as one of the worst off-ball linebackers at defending the pass.

Devin White does one thing at an elite level. He can blitz. For his career he has 145 pressures and 24 sacks on 641 pass rushes per Pro Football Focus. That amounts to a pressure rate of 22.7%.

If the Bucs can recreate that production with other players, then the floor is all but matched and the potential ceiling of the aforementioned young backers now becomes an unknown quantity the Bucs should explore with little to no downside. Now, these are very limited sample sizes, but combined Dennis, Russell and K.J. Britt have eight pressures and one sack on 23 pass rushes.

If you were to extrapolate that out to White’s sample size you would have 223 pressures and 28 sacks. It would seem that White’s ability to get to the quarterback is at least in part due to scheme that can translate to other players. So, yes, the Bucs should move on from White when he gets back. At least to a certain degree.

His athleticism would provide for an interesting wrinkle as a situational player for Todd Bowles. It might maximize his effectiveness and limit his warts. And in the meantime, I am really intrigued by Russell.

Adam Slivon: It’s Time To Bench Devin White For Younger Options With More Upside

If the Bucs want to have any chance at winning football games down the stretch, they need to put the best 11 players out there on each side of the ball. At inside linebacker, it is clear that Devin White is not one of the two best inside linebackers on the team. Both SirVocea Dennis and J.J. Russell shined in their first games getting the majority of the snaps, with Russell in particular showing just as much chops in getting after the quarterback and making plays.

If it were up to me, I’d start Lavonte David and J.J. Russell down the stretch with SirVocea Dennis sprinkled in. Even Ryan Neal could be utilized more in the box, which would take advantage of his tackling ability (67 tackles) and keep him from getting burnt in coverage. With that, where does that leave Devin White? Riding the pine.

As Scott Reynolds recently opined in his SR’s Fab 5 column, White has become a liability that is playing his way out of Tampa Bay — and not for good reason. Injury or not, he has been inconsistent for the better part of two seasons and it is has been his lapses that have led to opposing teams getting touchdowns in key moments.

Head coach Todd Bowles has defended Devin White, and there are still moments where he puts it together. But with Bowles’ own position in the air, one of the boldest moves he can make is to bench the linebacker and show his trust in some of the newer guys who have stepped up.

At other positions, teams make these kinds of moves all the time. Quarterback. Kicker. At inside linebacker, the Bucs should choose to bench Devin White and give some of the younger options a look. They have more of a future in Tampa Bay than White has.