Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 5 Alternate Super Bowl MVPs
3. Lavonte David, LB
Super Bowl stats: 6 tackles, 2 pass defended
The story of Super Bowl LV was the swarming Buccaneers defense and the job they did bottling up what is usually the most dynamic offense in football. Todd Bowles is now the only defensive coordinator to hold a Patrick Mahomes-led offense without a touchdown and part of that was the job Lavonte David did in pass coverage.
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Whether it was man coverage on Travis Kelce or sideline-to-sideline zone coverage, David was seemingly always within a yard of the football. With Tyreek Hill bracketed in double coverage, it was the responsibility of David to line up with the league’s second-leading receiver in Kelce.
Kelce is too gifted a player for a defense to completely shut out, especially when the defense is spread thin double-teaming on the outside, but David held his own in the middle, giving up the underneath stuff but never getting beat over the top.
Perhaps most importantly, David and the Bucs defense kept Kelce and the Chiefs offense out of the end zone, which includes holding Kansas City to a 0 percent red zone effectiveness on three trips. As the communicator of the defense, David set the young Bucs secondary up for success while at the same time holding his own, accounting for six tackles, all of which were solo.