![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/DavidwidesmileSB.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFourteen seasons of Buccaneers greatness have come to an end.<\/p>\n
This afternoon at One Buc Palace, legendary Bucs linebacker Lavonte David will announce his retirement. <\/p>\n
Former and recent teammates are expected there when the Bucs icon makes it official at 2 p.m. in the team auditorium.<\/p>\n
David\u2019s career spanned five head coaches and as many defensive coordinators. He played in a 4-3 and in a 3-4, and David thrived in them all.<\/p>\n
Joe was so glad to see David get loads of national spotlight during the past six seasons, when the Bucs played in dozens of prime time games plus 10 postseason games, including their Super Bowl win five years ago. That exposure didn\u2019t send David back to the Pro Bowl or the All-Pro team, but it did help raise his profile and lead many in the media to label him a worthy future Hall of Fame inductee.<\/p>\n
David\u2019s first four Bucs seasons \u2014 under head coaches Greg Schiano and Lovie Smith \u2014 were a blur of speed, power and relentless pursuit of the football.<\/p>\n
Recently, David talked about how his ugly, game-losing personal foul penalty at the Jets on opening day of the 2013 season locked him in to a new level of focus, so he wouldn\u2019t be remembered for that high-profile fail to close \u201cThe Darrelle Revis Return\u201d game. And David sure responded to his personal challenge. He finished that season with 7 sacks, 5 interceptions, 2 forced fumbles, 10 passes defensed, 145 combined tackles and his first All-Pro (first team) honor.<\/p>\n
David delivered so much greatness for so long \u2014 at outside linebaker and inside linebacker \u2014 Joe could write another 1,000 words. But no words can really do David\u2019s career justice.<\/p>\n
David walks away today a Super Bowl champ, a true franchise legend and hopefully satisfied that he left everything he had on the field \u2014 and happy that he walked the walk after saying he wanted to be a Buc for Life.<\/p>\n
Joe will have plenty later from David\u2019s news conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lavonte David Will Retire Today March 24th, 2026 Fourteen seasons of Buccaneers greatness have come to an end.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[5961,5960,349,99,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-542945","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-bucs-message-boards","9":"tag-bucs-news","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}