Yahoo Finance Buccaneers continue victory lap, Devin White says Chiefs' 'cocky' plan to blame for Super Bowl loss
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have every right to live it up this offseason. And they will.
The Super Bowl LV champs dominated the Kansas City Chiefs. It was one of the best defensive performances in Super Bowl history, keeping the Chiefs' powerful offense out of the end zone.
How did the Buccaneers do it? Their defense played very well. But one of their defensive stars also put the blame on the Chiefs' offensive plan, saying they were a little too cocky with their approach.
Devin White: Chiefs' plan did Bucs a favor
Linebacker Devin White, who was fantastic in the playoffs and one of the best players in Super Bowl LV, told Shannon Sharpe on FS1's "Undisputed" that the Chiefs plan was the wrong one.
Kansas City had a lot of offensive line injuries, and the game plan was exactly what the Buccaneers wanted. There wasn't enough help for the Chiefs' battered line, and Patrick Mahomes was running for his life just about every play.
“We knew that they was gonna be a cocky team, which they have every right to be,” White said, via Pro Football Talk. “They was the No. 1 offense in the entire National Football League. But the thing is, we knew they couldn’t block us. We knew that our front four was gonna dominate them. So they did us a favor. They played right into our hands.
“We weren’t gonna be that cocky team like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna play them in Cover One, we’re gonna shut them down.’ Our best guys matched up on their best guys. We was gonna make it be a team, collective win on defense, and that’s what we did, man. So at the end of the day they shouldn’t even talk about not having their offensive tackles when they didn’t even help them. They put them on islands by themselves with the best pass rushers in the game. So that’s at their own fault.”
The part about being a "cocky team" will live with the Chiefs all offseason.
Chiefs will have long offseason
Teams catch bad matchups, especially when injuries hit a key spot, and lose. It happens, even to the Chiefs.
But the Chiefs' approach with its offensive line issues was clearly the wrong one. The Buccaneers' strength was the front seven on defense, and Kansas City didn't adjust enough for that. Buccaneers defensive coordinator Todd Bowles had a plan that attacked the Chiefs' weaknesses and it worked perfectly.
It's a long offseason, and there are only so many debates to be had about hypothetical quarterback movement. For the Chiefs, a lot of the offseason will be spent with regrets over what went wrong in that Super Bowl blowout.
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