Bucs Rule 3 Players Out, Status Of David & Winfield Revealed

The Bucs continue to be banged up as the season comes along. Tampa Bay had a Saturday practice with the team playing on Monday night against the Chiefs and even the last practice of the week brought some surprises.

Bucs RB Bucky Irving – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Immediately as warmups began we saw starting left guard Ben Bredeson standing off on the sideline wearing a Bucs hat watching as his teammates got going. What we didn’t see was safety inside linebacker Lavonte David or safety Antoine Winfield Jr. until much at later.

Right at the very end of the session of practice that is open to the media, David arrived wearing a helmet, indicating that he was practicing today. Soon after Winfield came out, but had no helmet with him. As defensive backs started doing drills, Winfield just watched them go about it. Winfield was only added to to the injury report on Friday.

Players that had been out the previous two days were Bucky Irving, Sterling Shepard and Greg Gaines. While Gaines was not seen, Irving and Shepard did participate. The Bucs talked about the plan with Irving during the week with his toe injury as he’ll sit out two practices and practice on the third. Shepard has been dealing with a hamstring injury and had ran on a separate field earlier in the week. He was able to join everyone else on Saturday. Tykee Smith continued to practice and officially cleared concussion protocol on Saturday morning.

Todd Bowles States Which Bucs Are Out

Bucs FS Antoine Winfield Jr. and ILB Lavonte David – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Following practice Todd Bowles told the media that three Bucs were going to be out for Monday’s game. Those would be wide receiver Mike Evans, as expected, defensive tackle Greg Gaines and long snapper Evan Decker, who is coming off of injured reserve. That means Winfield, David and Bredeson are all ready to go. Gaines had already been out the week before, and it comes as a nice surprise that the other trio is available.

Bowles said that Winfield’s foot is “sore” but is fine. He declined to specify whether it was the same foot that cost him four games earlier in the season.

Getting Smith back and playing in and the slot, becomes a big help in the secondary having Smith and Winfield together. As much as Tampa Bay has struggled on defense, I would difficult to imagine that the group would look like without Winfield, or what the linebackers would look like if David were unavailable.

It’s going to be an uphill battle for the Bucs to knock off the undefeated Chiefs. They are at least as healthy as they’ve been in weeks going into it.