Tackling will be better.

In the history of football, your insider linebackers are supposed to be the ultimate warriors. Anyone who gets near them is supposed to go down.

And as much as it pains Joe to type the following, Bucs inside linebackers last year were bad at tackling. Yes, that includes a guy Joe believes should be in the Hall of Fame, Lavonte David.

Man, that’s just so weird. David made his bones as a tackler. As always, Father Time is undefeated.

Last year David, per Pro-Football-Reference.com had 13 missed tackles. In 2024 he had 14. As long as Pro Football Reference has been tracking missed tackle stats (2018), David’s previous high-water mark for missed tackles was 10 (2019 and 2020).

SirVocea Dennis? Yeah, he was rotten at tackling last season. He had 15 missed tackles, damn near one a game. Dennis played in 16 games.

New inside linebacker Alex Anzalone is known for being a solid tackler and his stats demonstrate this. Last year, Anzalone had five missed tackles in 16 games.

So if Anzalone can play defense this year like he did last year in Detroit, the tackling on the Bucs will be that much better.

Back in 2023 Anzalone had a whopping 22 missed tackles. That sort of tells Joe that teams were either running at him for some reason, or Anzalone was getting to the ball a lot but not being able to finish the job. Or both.