Jordan Whitehead, Mike Edwards Bring Versatility Required for Bucs' Defense

Todd Bowles has a pair of perfect fits for the back end of his defense.

Yes, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers spent a second-round pick on Antoine Winfield, Jr. in the 2020 NFL Draft. But the Bucs already have a pair of promising playmakers who have the perfect skill set to excel on the back end of Todd Bowles' defense.

Jordan Whitehead was having the best season of his career in 2019 before a hamstring injury ended it prematurely. Mike Edwards, a third-round pick in the 2019 draft, was thrown into the fire in multiple roles as a rookie, and is primed to use that experience to his advantage this season.

“Jordan looks good – he’s playing the pass better, he’s a little bit stronger to a point," Bucs head coach Bruce Arians said via video conference Thursday. "You know he’s going to throw his face in the fan – no question about that – so the weight should help him there. I like Mike’s progress. He’s getting his hands on balls, breaking on balls, getting out to centerfield [and] covering a lot of ground, and he’s doing a better job tackling when we’re tackling.”

Edwards says the depth and experience of his position group will make them even better this year than they were down the stretch in 2019, when they helped anchor one of the NFL's top defenses over the finals six games of the season.

“It makes everybody better," Edwards said Thursday. "Antoine [Winfield Jr.] is a real good player. He came in and he’s real versatile. Andrew Adams, he’s our vet in our room. He brings enthusiasm and can play all different safety spots. Jordan Whitehead, he’s the vocal guy in our room. He’s a hard hitter – that’s my boy right there. We’ve got a lot of depth in our secondary, so we all can play different safety spots and we’re just flying around, getting all the guys on the defense lined up and just playing football.”

Whitehead is excited to get back on the field after ending last season with an injury, and the addition of Winfield only makes him more excited for his group's potential heading into the 2020 campaign.

“Last year toward the end of the season, the defense, the young DBs – we were getting in a roll," Whitehead said Thursday. "I was starting to find a little hitch on my step in learning how to blitz and learning the defense more than I did during the beginning of the season. Coach [Todd] Bowles – meeting with him – he knows the whole defense and once you meet with him, he’ll break it down and he’ll tell you how to fake your blitzes, stuff like that. That was the biggest thing. It was frustrating [with] that injury. I felt like I was just getting started and the defense as a whole was just getting started, so missing those last two games definitely hurt because I know it would’ve rolled over into this year. But, I got to watch from the sidelines the last two games [and] reflect the whole offseason. These guys are hungry – I’m more hungry than ever right now. We’ve got a whole new start this year. We’ve got the same players and we need to start building. We can’t start slow this year; we have to start fast.”

Bowles requires much of his safeties, calling on them to be interchangeable between free and strong, with the ability to match up in man or zone coverage, as well as play the run. He'll have plenty of weapons at his disposal in 2020, and all of them have the skill set to be successful in his system.