Underrated: Not Lavonte David?
May 15th, 2025
PFF tribe doesn’t believe.
You know, Joe might have to start calling Bucs icon Lavonte David “Mr. Underrated.”
David is so underrated that guys like J.J. Watt and Luke Kuechly take to social media and sports hollering shows to talk about how underrated he is. And during the very few times David goes on a national show, the core subject discussed is that he is underrated.
And still the guy cannot sniff a Pro Bowl. It’s just insane.
(Yeah, Joe knows someone will say, “Who cares about the Pro Bowl?” Well, agents and players sure do. They have bonuses in their contracts tied to getting the honor. And the Hall of Fame selectors even count Pro Bowl appearances as standard for selection.)
So the PFF tribe decided to choose the most underrated player for each team and David wasn’t the choice.
Instead, Jonathon Macri has YaYa Diaby as his most underrated.
Diaby didn’t explode in the sack column in 2024, which kept his play under the radar, but his underlying pass-rush metrics suggest he had a breakout season in 2024.
Perhaps most impressive about Diaby’s past season is that he delivered an 18.1% pass-rush win rate, which was a top-10 mark for the position, as were his 70 total pressures. Sacks are often what makes headlines, but Diaby is well on pace to regress positively in that regard, which will likely keep him from remaining underrated.
Sacks make headlines because sacks change games. Pressures rarely mean s(p)it. Pressures are the football equivalent of horseshoes and hand grenades. Close doesn’t count.
And while Joe likes YaYa and still thinks YaYa will be a good player, it’s about results, not “metrics.” YaYa’s sack total went down last year. For most of the season, he came up empty, though he had a late-season flurry late that was very encouraging.
David puts up Hall of Fame numbers. Has his entire career. And the guy can’t pay his way into the Pro Bowl. That’s really not underrated, it’s criminal, like Watt said.
May 15th, 2025 at 10:37 am
We know what we have in David and David knows how much we appreciate his work.
May 15th, 2025 at 10:38 am
It’s a damn shame. Just unexplainable.
Lavonte needs to shove a ref, hit somebody with a football, scream at a coach.
Something to get him mentioned on the Football shows.
Anything to get his name mentioned!
But he won’t, because he is the consummate professional.
And somehow, that’s why he gets overlooked.
A damn shame
May 15th, 2025 at 10:38 am
Well, these are all meaningless offseason talking points, but when it comes to impact vs how much a player is talked about, YaYa is probably even more underrated than LVD.
May 15th, 2025 at 10:51 am
David Newton predicts the Panthers to sweep the Bucs and win the south with an 8-9 record. Utter nonsense
May 15th, 2025 at 11:09 am
To add to that, David had 1 more sack than Diaby and he’s an ILB.
It’s true, even under pressure a QB can roll out and get a first down… and the edge guy gets the pressure metric for not stopping anything.
David has been perennially underrated for a really long time.
May 15th, 2025 at 11:20 am
Hopefully (except for Ira) the Hall of Fame committee has some younger voters that do not care about pro bowls and look at results and stats on the field. If so LVD gets in. I agree with Joe that results matter and YaYa needs to find a way to turn those pressures into sacks.
May 15th, 2025 at 11:26 am
I just heard Simeon rice will be the new ring of honor inductee
May 15th, 2025 at 11:31 am
Pressures should be lined up against the resulting play. Was it an errant throw that led to an incompletion or pick? Was it a completion? Those things matter when talking pressures.
May 15th, 2025 at 11:33 am
UNDERRATED NO MORE
I live on the westcoast and I’ve seen the media heap praise on LVD and his career the past 2-3 years. LVD is very well known and appreciated for an ILB.
May 15th, 2025 at 11:37 am
Well deserved for Simeon Rice.
He was a monster in the first SB run.
Absolutely was a difference maker on the edge.
LVD is exactly that type of a player but on a longer time table and an all time Buc.
Should be a first ballot HOF LB.
Hope he has one more great year in him. Especially since we largely ignored the LB position so far this offseason.
May 15th, 2025 at 11:40 am
When you are competing against guys like Bobby Wagner year after year, Fred Warner, and others that have a Great Year here and there it’s tough to get one of the two spots or alternate position.
Lavonte David doesn’t seem to me like the guy that needs those in his circle to tell him how great a job he does.
Had he decided to play for a higher profile organization or one that has had a better win rate over 50 years he may have made a few. He chose to be a Buc.
His reward was not Pro Bowl appearances.
Career earning has Wagner 114M (10 Pro Bowls) , Warner 65M (4 Pro Bowls) , David 94M (1 Pro Bowl), and Kuechly63M (7 Pro Bowls)
Based on Earnings the important one’s did not have him under rated.
May 15th, 2025 at 11:54 am
Well, at least we have 4 national games this year to showcase him
May 15th, 2025 at 12:27 pm
Having pressure from other side helps
May 15th, 2025 at 12:36 pm
Stupid is as stupid drools, PFF tards.
May 15th, 2025 at 1:09 pm
Hard to get sacks when back end cant cover
May 15th, 2025 at 1:11 pm
guys too open short for him to get there, sadly
May 15th, 2025 at 2:03 pm
Funny thing is I was just fired from a job and I was upset losing my career. The next day, my ex-boss asked me for passwords, etc. and I was so upset I considered not giving them to him. Then I thought about how LVD would approach it and wound up giving them the passwords.
May 15th, 2025 at 2:51 pm
It isn’t clear to me whether the metric of a replacement level player cant be applied to football and then have an overall war like baseball.
I suspect with better statistical measurement methods a player like lavinte would have better media coverage
May 15th, 2025 at 3:59 pm
YaYa played really well last year, it’s not his fault stupid Bowles has all his DB’s drop 20 yards in coverage and stand around in zone, so when YaYa gets close to QBs they always have someone open to dump the ball off to.
With that said, the PFF ratings on Bucs defenders is beyond stupid – they claim Kancey had a terrible year. Did these idiots actually watch the games? How about hiring some Americans to do their ratings instead of a bunch of potato pickers in Ireland who don’t know football from soccer.
May 15th, 2025 at 5:24 pm
Diaby will regress positively??? Where did that Shakespeare wanna-be learn to write? Pathetic.
May 15th, 2025 at 5:53 pm
YaYa won’t be underrated until he has LVD type of stats and is ignored as LVD is.
May 15th, 2025 at 6:16 pm
The question is WHY David is underrated in spite of the well documented evidence that proves otherwise.
May 15th, 2025 at 6:30 pm
I do think YaYa will have the year we all want for two things:
Hassan Reddick, even if not a prime version, will do his share much more than the man he replaced and…
THIS YEAR Kancey’s calf muscles behave.
May 15th, 2025 at 6:58 pm
Diaby improved in many areas so I’m excited for him this upcoming season. There’s more to it than the final sack numbers.
May 15th, 2025 at 10:36 pm
It is criminal. Also what is criminal is the fact that hall of fame selectors use pro bowls as a metric. The pro bowl is nothing but a popularity contest and is not really based on actual stats. Only the players with the best stats should be in the pro bowl not because they are popular
May 15th, 2025 at 11:25 pm
What Rod Munch said.
May 16th, 2025 at 12:43 am
Yaya is a hammer!
He will come back even more jacked up this year!
The guy is a pure blooded West African Adonis.
He battled some shoulder injuries last year: like JPP and Simeon Rice.
I’ve noticed that many edge players have their careers ruined by shoulder issues.
Noah Spence too.
If I was an edge player, I would wear some kind of compression gear on my shoulders, work out my shoulders all the time, and focus on learning martial arts as well.
Why?
Handwork.
Every defensive lineman should study wrestling, ju-jitsu, and MMA.
Especially handwork.
Go Bucs!