{"id":94512,"date":"2025-06-01T00:46:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T00:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/94512\/"},"modified":"2025-06-01T00:46:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-01T00:46:10","slug":"tampa-bay-buccaneers-84m-defender-antoine-winfield-jr-predicted-for-rebound-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/94512\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ $84M Defender Antoine Winfield Jr. Predicted for Rebound Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ $84M Defender Antoine Winfield Jr. Predicted for Rebound Season<\/a> originally appeared on Athlon Sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Like much of the rest of the defense, Tampa Bay Buccaneers star safety Antoine Winfield Jr. had a less-than-stellar 2025.<\/p>\n

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The former Minnesota Golden Gopher dealt with an ankle injury for two separate parts of the season, causing him to miss eight total games in his first season after signing a four-year, $84.1 million deal with $45 million in guarantees to keep him in Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n

Winfield posted 60 total tackles with 34 solo and two for loss with four QB hits, two sacks and a 58-yard fumble recovery for a touchdown.<\/p>\n

While the Buccaneers have focused on improving one of the league’s worst units from a year ago this offseason through free agency and the draft, a resurgent year from Winfield would go a long way toward the ultimate goal.<\/p>\n

Pro Football Focus named Winfield the Bucs’ “bounce-back candidate” for next season.<\/p>\n

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\u201cTampa Bay struggled to defend the middle of the field in 2024, due in part to injuries and a dip in production from star safety Antoine Winfield Jr”, PFF said. “He posted a career-low 50.8 coverage grade and, for the first time in his career, failed to record an interception.\u201d<\/p>\n

Winfield posted almost elite numbers in 2023, so we know the potential is there.<\/p>\n

And the ankle injury isn’t expected to be a factor next season, so we could see his play return to that 2023 form. He’ll turn 27 in August, so youth is still on his side.<\/p>\n

Tampa Bay is on an incredible run, tying a record four-straight NFC South titles, and has made the postseason five years running.<\/p>\n

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Related: Bucs Star Defender Reveals Hardest Offensive Coaches to Game Plan Against<\/a><\/p>\n

Related: Buccaneers Offensive Star Ranked Near Top of NFL<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports<\/a> on May 31, 2025, where it first appeared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ $84M Defender Antoine Winfield Jr. Predicted for Rebound Season originally appeared on Athlon Sports. Like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2077],"tags":[10975,13236,211,7,24935,6,704,250,2597,2596],"class_list":{"0":"post-94512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-buccaneers","8":"tag-ankle-injury","9":"tag-antoine-winfield-jr","10":"tag-buccaneers","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-minnesota-golden-gopher","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-tampa-bay","15":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers","16":"tag-tampabay","17":"tag-tampabaybuccaneers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114605351660384291","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}