Seeing is believing.

No, Antoine Winfield was not talking about Rachaad White trying to run the ball.

We all remember the play last year. Bryce Young hit DJ Chark down the left sidelines in the Week 18 game that the Bucs needed to win to make the playoffs and win the division.

Chark looked like he had an easy score. Winfield actually was on the far hashmark with his back turned to the play. When he noticed the ball wasn’t coming his way he turned around and noticed Chark had a clear path to the end zone.

Winfield wheeled around and made a beeline to Chark along the sideline near the goal line. As Chark was about to cross the goal line, Winfield punched the ball out and Jamel Dean recovered in the end zone.

Bucs ball.

The Bucs would go on to win 9-0 but if not for Winfield’s play, who knows how that game turns out?

Of course, that play was recalled yesterday at a press conference at One Buc Palace when Winfield signed his new contract making him the highest-paid defensive back in the game, a 4-year pact for $84.1 million dollars.

Winfield pulled off a similar play a few weeks before when the Bucs hosted the Dixie Chicks. He punched the ball away from punchless dismal Desmond Ridder to save a touchdown. Unfortunately, the Bucs lost that game.

Winfield said he’s able to make plays like that because he envisions them.

“You learn every year, and I feel like the more years I’m getting underneath my belt, I learn more things about myself and about my game,” Winfield said. “I feel like the best thing for me is just manifesting it, you know, seeing it before it happens.

“I mean, you’ve got to have that vision first, and then you’ve got to have a plan and put the work in for that to actually come to fruition. So, it’s extremely important and it’s something that I just kind of incorporated into my game over time.”

Of course, Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht asked Winfield to envision another Super Bowl. Smart man, that Licht.

Those two plays by Winfield, and his many other forced fumbles, picks and sacks, are what separates him from the pack.

Al Davis used to have a term for stud players like Winfield. “He tilts the field,” Davis used to say about ballers. There is no doubt Winfield is a game-changer.

And that’s what the great ones like Winfield do. They change the most important of games.

DJ Chark mentioned that he saw Winfield and tried to go “over the top” because he thought the safety was going low and Winfield just made a great play on the ball: pic.twitter.com/tNvExlDsgD

— Mike Kaye (@mike_e_kaye) January 8, 2024