FAB 2. Conte In Command In Tampa Bay’s Secondary

He’s not getting beat in coverage, and he’s breaking up passes, getting interceptions and pick-sixes in practice. What more do you want from Bucs free safety Chris Conte?

Conte, the chosen scapegoat for anything that has ailed the Bucs secondary over the last two years in Tampa Bay and one of the team’s most under appreciated players, is developing into a real playmaking force in training camp.

Conte haters, beware.

The two most impressive safeties in practice might be Conte and J.J. Wilcox, the team’s second-team strong safety. Both have two interceptions with Conte having a pick-six of Jameis Winston during Thursday’s training camp practice at One Buccaneer Place. Although the Bucs have yet to play in a preseason game, Conte shows no signs of surrendering his starting free safety role.

“First off, Chris is really athletic,” Bucs head coach Dirk Koetter said. “Chris almost is as athletic as a corner. He can really run, he’s long, I think Chris’ confidence is up right now. He, maybe in the past, would get down on himself a little too much, for no reason in my opinion.”

Get ready.

You might just end up being a Conte fan – or at least not disliking the guy so much.

Bucs FS Chris Conte – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Conte may indeed be the most misunderstood Buccaneer on the roster. When he came to Tampa Bay in 2015 via free agency at Lovie Smith’s request, Conte arrived with a lot of baggage.

To Bears fans he was a pariah – a scapegoat for a bad 2014 season in which Chicago went 5-11. Many Bears fans trashed him on social media when he signed with the Bucs, and he never got a real opportunity to have a fresh start in Tampa Bay.

“Looking back, Chicago was a tough situation for me,” Conte told me in his Bucs Training Camp Diary, which appears two times per week exclusively on PewterReport.com. “Once Lovie Smith left we tried to run his defense without Lovie being there. We had a lot of injuries and just a bad defense. There were a lot of guys on that team that aren’t even playing in the NFL anymore. That’s a city that loves football and when football isn’t going well there are going to be a lot of angry people.

“It seems like there are Chicago fans everywhere, even in Tampa. From that one season in 2013 when we had a bad year there was a lot of negativity that surrounds me. I don’t know why or how to get rid of that, but I’ve stopped worrying about that and trying to change people’s minds. I’m just going out there to do what I do and enjoy playing the game that I love and play for the people that I care about. There are always going to be people out there saying negative things. I can’t worry about that.”

Conte didn’t exactly endear himself to Bucs fans when he was beaten in coverage on touchdown passes at Arizona and at home against Oakland.

“At the beginning of the season one of our big problems was communication,” said safety Keith Tandy, who is one of Conte’s closest friends. “Those plays you mentioned, the communication is crucial. You only see Chris out there by himself, but he wasn’t supposed to be there by himself. That’s what the fans don’t understand. Okay, you still have to make that play, but when our communication got better the safety wasn’t left out there like that guarding a Julio Jones or an Amari Cooper, so it made a big difference down the stretch.”

Perhaps one of the reasons why Conte is far from being a fan favorite is the physical resemblance to Sabby Piscitelli, a former second-round draft pick in 2007 that lasted just three years in the league and four years total in the NFL. Piscitelli was 6-foot-3, 222 and looked the part athletically, but was often burned in coverage because he lacked instincts.

Ex-Bucs WR Louis Murphy and FS Chris Conte – Photo by: Getty Images

The 6-foot-2, 197-pound Conte is widely regarded as one of the Bucs’ best athletes, but is a much more instinctive player. Yet Conte feels like he has been stereotyped.

“I don’t know if I’m your typical DB,” Conte said. “There are not a lot of white guys out there. I think I may be the only white guy on our defense. It’s a lot easier when you’re watching TV to say, “Look at the white guy there!” (Laughs) You kind of stick out like a sore thumb, so when we miss a play it’s easy to say, ‘Oh, that’s Chris.’

“I don’t know if that plays a role in it, but I get targeted for a lot of things. It is what it is. Maybe people don’t know me all that well outside of football, but I also don’t want to put my whole life out there. I don’t want to be that person to invite people out there to know everything about me. I’m happy for people to get to know me, but I also don’t make my life about Instagram and all that. I don’t need 100,000 followers. I’m fine with the friends I have.”

One of those friends is Tandy, who ironically, took Conte’s starting job when he missed two starts due to a chest injury. Tandy went on a tear, recording four interceptions over the last five games to become a starter at strong safety heading into 2017. Conte played well enough last year to get re-signed to a two-year contract in the offseason.

With injuries to free safety Justin Evans, the team’s second-round pick, and newcomer J.J. Wilcox sidelining them during the OTAs, Conte entered training camp as the Bucs’ starting free safety opposite Tandy. With stellar play through the first week, Conte shows no signs of giving up the starting job, either.

Bucs FS Chris Conte and SS Keith Tandy – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

“Chris is misunderstood,” Tandy said. “First thing, when you turn the film on, Chris is going to be the hardest playing person on that film. People don’t realize how many touchdowns he saved last year. A lot of times when you’re a free safety in the middle of the field, which was his role a lot, it’s hard to get interceptions and stuff like that, but he had a lot of open-field saving tackles, and that’s not easy. I missed a couple of those myself.

“But he’s very athletic, he’s got great size, he’s probably got the best feet and hips on the team, and a lot of people don’t see that because of his size. He played corner in college. He’s not typically the one guarding guys, but he’s good at guarding receivers, and he can guard tight ends, too. He can do pretty much everything.”

Tandy and several Bucs teammates credit Conte’s pick-six against Chicago in the ninth game of the season as the turning point for the defense.

“He does, he definitely deserves the credit,” Tandy said. “One thing that we talk about is how getting turnovers is contagious. You usually don’t get one, they come in bunches. Chris started it and got the first one [with the pick-six]. He played the play perfect. You couldn’t draw it up any better than that. That was like the play that gave the whole defense confidence. The offense fed off the defense, the special teams fed off of everybody and that’s really what turned our season around.”

For Conte, and all of the negativity he had to endure leaving Chicago and heading south to Tampa Bay, getting a pick-six against his former team in a 36-10 rout was special.

“My pick-six against Chicago meant a lot to me personally, but it also meant a lot to our team because we knew we were almost there as a defense,” Conte said. “It was just little communication things that would go wrong. We knew we had the talent and it was just a matter of time before we got everybody on the same page. We had a lull of not getting many turnovers in the first part of the year, but after that it seemed like everybody was making plays. That little run we went on at the end of the season was fun. All the guys were feeling good and feeling confident in the defense.”

Koetter identified Conte’s big interception as a fire-starter for the defense midway through the 2016 campaign.

“We’re talking to these guys all the time about making your plays, making your plays, making your plays,” Koetter said. “You can’t make plays just willy-nilly, running around the field with your head cut off. When your opportunity comes, you’ve got to make it. Chris, any player, when they make a good play it raises their confidence level, just like it raises the team’s confidence level. I think you’ll hear the guys talking about that. That’s part of practice – a guy makes a play, that side of the ball tends to feed off it.”

Although Conte was a Smith loyalist and was surprised to see his former head coach in Chicago and Tampa Bay fired by the Bucs after the 2015 season, he has embraced Koetter and defensive coordinator Mike Smith with open arms.

Bucs FS Chris Conte – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

“It was hard to see somebody like that go because he is a very loyal person,” Conte said. “You want to do everything you can for a guy like that, but I had also played in the same system for my first five years in the league. At the same time, it was exciting for me to play in a new system and do things I had never done before. I was excited about Mike Smith coming in and the opportunities that presented me to learn a different kind of defense and do different things that I wasn’t able to do in Lovie’s defense. It’s been fun.”

The fun for Conte is just beginning. After his pick-six against Chicago, he had a game-changing end zone interception the next week at Kansas City that helped fuel Tampa Bay’s fourth quarter comeback at Arrowhead Stadium. So far in camp, Conte looks like he’s been picking up from where he left off last season – changing the outcomes of games.

And perhaps Conte will be changing Bucs fans’ opinions of him, too.