Let’s put the spotlight on Bucs safety Antoine Winfield Jr.
With the 2024 season firmly in the rearview mirror and the pre-draft process, free agency, the draft itself, OTAs and mini-camp also behind us, it’s time to ramp up the excitement for training camp and then, of course, the Bucs’ 50th season. As we did last summer, we’ll spend the weeks leading up to training camp focusing on some storylines and narratives surrounding some of Tampa Bay’s biggest stars in 2025.
So far, we’ve worked our way through storylines for nine players on offense: quarterback Baker Mayfield, running backs Bucky Irving and Rachaad White, wide receivers Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Jalen McMillan, tight end Cade Otton and offensive tackles Tristan Wirfs and Luke Goedeke.
From there, we moved over to the defensive side of the ball. We first covered key members of the front seven, including defensive tackle Calijah Kancey, nose tackle Vita Vea, outside linebackers Yaya Diaby and Haason Reddick and inside linebacker Lavonte David. Then, we moved into the secondary with cornerbacks Zyon McCollum and Jamel Dean, as well as defensive back Tykee Smith.
Today, we wrap up our 2025 Bucs Storylines series with a look at three storylines surrounding safety Antoine Winfield Jr. in 2025.
Can Antoine Winfield Jr. Rebound From Injury-Plagued 2024 Season?
Football can be a game of highs and lows, and that’s something Bucs safety Antoine Winfield Jr. has experienced for himself over the last couple of years.
In 2023, he posted 122 tackles (76 solo), six sacks, three interceptions, a league-leading six forced fumbles and four fumble recoveries. He was a Pro Bowl snub, but that didn’t matter by the time he was named a First Team All-Pro.
From there, Winfield signed a four-year, $84.1 million contract to remain in Tampa Bay. That deal made him the highest-paid defensive back in NFL history, but unfortunately the 2024 season proved to be a difficult one as injuries limited the 2020 second-round pick to only nine games.
Bucs FS Antoine Winfield Jr. – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR
Knowing how Winfield operates, he’ll be a man on a mission in 2025 as he looks to bounce back. Not only will he be looking to stay healthy — he’ll be looking to dominate the way he did during his 2023 All-Pro season. The soon-to-be 27-year-old safety quickly rose to being one of the league’s best at his position, and he’ll be wanting to make sure no one forgot about him because of a down year in 2024.
Winfield remains one of the most important players on the Bucs defense, and the team sorely missed him while he was out last year. First, it was an ankle injury he suffered in Week 1 that cost him four games. Then came a late-season knee injury that cost him another four games.
Winfield needs a rebound season in 2025 — and the Bucs need that from him as well. He has more Pro Bowls and All-Pros in his future, so it’s time to put the past in the past and move forward, right? Look for a fast start to the new campaign for Antoine Winfield Jr.
Will Antoine Winfield Jr. Finally Have The Right Complement At Safety?
As discussed in Tuesday’s edition of Bucs Storylines that focused on Tykee Smith, the Bucs are hoping they’ve finally found the right partner for Antoine Winfield Jr. on the back end of the defense. That’s something they haven’t been able to do for a few years after the duo of Winfield and Jordan Whitehead played so well in 2020 and 2021.
Once Whitehead left in 2022 via free agency, the search was on for Tampa Bay to find a quality replacement to pair with Winfield. Only it never quite worked out — in fact, it hasn’t to this day.
Signing the combination of Logan Ryan and Keanu Neal in 2022 didn’t lead to the desired results. Bringing Ryan Neal in ahead of 2023 didn’t give the team its answer either. Not even a reunion with Whitehead in 2024 worked out. Whitehead was limited to 12 games and didn’t look like the same guy the Bucs had been missing for two years. And it didn’t help that Winfield was sidelined for half the season as well.
With Whitehead’s release this offseason, the search continued. And the next big hope is an in-house candidate, Tykee Smith, who had a strong rookie season in 2024 while primarily playing nickel comeback.
Bucs SS Tykee Smith and FS Antoine Winfield Jr. – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR
To Winfield’s credit, he hasn’t always needed that other complementary partner to play at a high level. Just look at 2023, his best season to date. Ryan Neal struggled for much of the year, yet it didn’t seem to matter — at least for Winfield.
But it impacts the defense as a whole. Todd Bowles can get more out of his defense if he’s operating with two safeties who complement each other as perfectly as Winfield and Whitehead did the first time around.
So, can Tykee Smith be that guy next to Winfield? The Bucs hope so. The two players have complementary skill sets, which helps. Not to mention, both are incredibly high football I.Q. guys, which will also help them get on the same page — both with each other and with the rest of the Buccaneer defense.
Can Antoine Winfield Jr. Lead The Bucs’ Quest For More Takeaways?
The Bucs need more takeaways in 2025 — especially from a secondary that only mustered up six interceptions last year. It’ll take more from the team’s cornerbacks to truly get the whole secondary to the next level in terms of takeaways, but can Antoine Winfield Jr. get back to leading the way in that department?
It’s something he did in a big way in 2024 when he picked off three passes and added six forced fumbles, which led the league. It was that playmaking ability that had him making history on what seemed like a weekly basis toward the end of the 2023 season, as he was putting up stat lines that could only be compared to Buccaneer legends and even NFL legends in general.
Antoine Winfield Jr. joins Pro Football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins (2002) as the only defensive backs with 3.0+ sacks, 3+ forced fumbles and 3+ fumble recoveries in a single season since 2000.
— Buccaneers Communications (@BuccaneersComms) December 10, 2023
The takeaways plummeted for Winfield in his limited action last year. Over nine games, he had zero interceptions, zero forced fumbles and only one fumble recovery, though he did return that one for a touchdown in New Orleans.
Bucs FS Antoine Winfield Jr. – Photo by: USA Today
And to be fair to No. 31, he would’ve had a forced fumble to his name had the NFL had the goal line cameras operating for Tampa Bay’s home loss to Atlanta in late October. Because in that game, Winfield pulled off what should at this point be referred to as a Winfield Special, chasing down a ball carrier and punching the ball out just before he crosses the goal line for a touchdown. He did that to both Desmond Ridder and D.J. Chark in 2023, and he really did it to Kyle Pitts again last year.
NFL on Fox rules analyst Mike Pereira explains why officials didn’t overturn a Kyle Pitts TD where Antoine Winfield Jr. appeared to punched it out.
Basically, there wasn’t a down the line angle, which potentially screwed the Bucs out of an incredible play. pic.twitter.com/KWpwYyUAzf
— Josh Hill (@jdavhill) October 27, 2024
Either way, the Bucs need more ball production out of Winfield as he returns to the lineup in full health for the 2025 season. As a captain and one of the top playmakers on defense, he’ll be charged with leading the way in the quest for more takeaways. Tampa Bay’s defense has fallen short in quite a few categories in recent years, but it appears better positioned than it has been in a while to take its collective play to the next level.
Can Winfield replicate a three-interception, six-forced fumble stat line? That’s always going to be tough, but think back to last offseason and what he had to say coming off an All-Pro season that saw him create nine turnovers.
“I [have] get 10,” Winfield said. “My goal was to get 10 takeaways, however they come.”
Winfield was referencing what he manifested ahead of the 2023 season. He wanted to become an All-Pro. He wanted to become the highest-paid player at his position. He did both of those things, but he fell just shy of the 10-takeaway goal. And the Bucs fell shy of the Super Bowl he was also looking to manifest.
Unfortunately, the 2024 season didn’t give Winfield much of a chance to make good on accomplishing those leftover goals. But if he can find a way to manage 10+ takeaways in 2025, that would be another box to check off. Not only that, but that many takeaways would bode well for getting Tampa Bay that much closer to another Super Bowl, setting up a chance for Antoine Winfield Jr. to get ring No. 2 of his career.
