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Lavonte David wanted to leave the Bucs but Todd Bowles helped convince him to stay and it led to a Super Bowl win

Originally posted on A to Z Sports | By Evan Winter | Last updated May 27, 2025 1:35 PM ET

Lavonte David is not only one of the best players in Tampa Bay Buccaneers history, but he's one of the most beloved and adored guys to ever don the pewter and red.

He's entering his 14th season with the Bucs and it's a career that's seen the lowest of lows and the highest of highs, but the latter didn't come until recently and the former had reached a boiling point that had David looking for a way out after a disatrous 2018 season that saw the team finish with a 5-11 record.

Out of seven NFL seasons to that point, Tampa Bay had just one winning season in the books; a 9-7 finish in 2016. The Bucs had yet to even make the playoffs with David on the roster and he was tired of it.

"My first eight years here weren't going so well. There wasn't a lot of winning going on and that was a point where I did want to leave because we were making a coaching change," David told former Bucs head coach Jon Gruden on the latest episode of his Gruden Goes Long broadcast.

"But guys called me, [general manager] Jason Licht called me and BA called me and they were like, 'Man, we want you to be a part, a foundational piece of this turnaround.' And ever since then, it did exactly that. So, [it's a] testament to those guys, you know, really putting their front foot forward."

As mentioned earlier, the Bucs were coming off a 5-11 season and Dirk Koetter had just been let go. Fortunately, the team was able to hire Bruce Arians to reset the culture and rekindle the winning ways of the late 90's/early 2000's. It wasn't just Licht and Arians that convinced David to stay, though. Todd Bowles played a role in it, too, and he talked about that with reporters on Tuesday.

"I remember us having a conversation because he hadn't played in a 3-4 [defense] before, so he was very skeptical of playing the 'MO' linebacker position," said Bowles. "I told him it was pretty much just like the 4-3 [defense], it was just a difference of [scheme]. And with Bruce talking to him, then he having to sit down with me as well, and we talked scheme-wise, he came in and bought in, and he kind of took off from there.

"So, you know, it's a credit to him, being able to play in various schemes, different types of schemes, and change his game. Whether he's a dropper in the Cover 2 scheme, whether he's a blitzer in our scheme, or whether he's a cover guy, that's a credit to him being a good football player."

It's fair to say the Bucs don't win the Super Bowl without David on the roster in 2020, Kudos to everyone else involved in keeping him around to (hopefully) finish his career with the Bucs and maybe get one more ring before it's all said and done.

This article first appeared on A to Z Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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