Joe would love to the see the Bucs break from tradition and put Lavonte David in the Buccaneers Ring of Honor this year.

What a cool move it would be for a player everyone loves to say has been criminally underappreciated.

It won’t happen, but one guy who would love seeing it is retired Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly.

Kuechly was a finalist for the 2025 Pro Football Hall of Fame class but didn’t make it. He’s also a 2012 draft classmate of David.

A guest on the Bussin’ With The Boys podcast this seek, Kuechly was asked about the impressive stable of linebacker in that 2012 class. His most glowing words came for David.

“The guy that I never feel gets enough credit is Lavonte. I love Lavonte. Go look at his sacks, his forced fumbles and his fumble recoveries,” Kuechly said. “It’s unbelievable.”

Kuechly had a captive audience. Co-host Will Compton played with David at Nebraska and is always selling his former teammate. Compton talked about how David has more than 1,600 combined tackles and how historic that is.

Joe will add that David has 1,111 solo tackles, fifth-most in the modern era. That’s more than Hall of Famers Brian Urlacher, Zach Thomas, Junor Seau and Rondé Barber.

Kuechly noted how “the thing that hurts” David is how he was a 4-3 outside linebacker during his younger days and that put him in the Pro Bowl voting pool with 3-4 outside linebackers, guys that were racking up massive sack numbers and were household names.

Compton said it’s bulls** how disrespected David has been compared to Kuechly and linebacker Bobby Wagner, another member of that 2012 draft class.