In 2024, Buccaneers' left tackle Tristan Wirfs once again set the standard in the trenches. Wirfs became the first player in the history of the All-Pro award to earn the recognition as both a left tackle and a right tackle, previously earning the first-team distinction as a right tackle in 2021. Wirfs has garnered four Pro Bowl selections (2021-24) throughout his tenure in the Bay, two Associated Press first-team All-Pro selections, a second-team All-Pro selection (2022) and was a member of the PFWA All-Rookie Team (2020), in addition to starting on Tampa Bay's Super Bowl LV Championship team in his rookie season.
Wirfs totaled 1,014 offensive snaps this past season, and per Pro Football Focus (PFF) metrics, he yielded just one quarterback hit and 12 pressures, while not surrendering a single sack across 16 games played. PFF credited Wirfs with a 93.7 pass-blocking grade this season – the highest among any qualified offensive lineman. Wirfs also held the second-lowest quarterback pressure rate (4.7%) and lowest 1-on-1 pressure rate (5.0%) among players with 500-plus pass-blocking snaps played in 2024, per the NFL's Next Gen Stats.
At the outset of the 2023 season, Wirfs was moved to left tackle after cementing himself as one of the top players in the league at right tackle. The transition, although tumultuous, led to success once again for the perennial pro bowler. Wirfs described the shift in a similar fashion to wiping with the opposite hand or operating a mouse with your non-dominant hand. Shifting from the right side of the line to the left and vice versa requires different footwork, coordination and fundamentals all in a span of a few seconds while trying to keep pass rushers out of the backfield. The muscle memory has to be re-worked and Wirfs also faced a crippling mental anxiety battle after making the shift to left tackle.
"You are your biggest critic and I am harder on myself than anybody so I started having these nightmares and thought I was not going to be good enough," described Tristan Wirfs via The Pivot Podcast. "I remember I had nightmares of giving up sacks, like strip sacks end of game and nightmares where I could not take a pass set and it was just stupid stuff and I thought, 'What am I doing?' It was early March at the time and they had told me they were going to move me. It had been a couple weeks and I was freaking out…I spent that offseason working with Luke [Goedeke] and just going through sets and sets and sets and the better I felt. It was wild for a while just that anxiety of not being good enough and not living up to my own expectation or the expectation that was put upon me to go play left tackle…Our sports psychologist helped me a lot in just replacing the negative thoughts with positive thoughts. If I said I sucked then it was, 'Ok, what are we going to do to fix it and what can I do to be better?'"
The self-validation through positive inner dialogue spurred production in the trenches on the left side. Wirfs, a former first-round pick out of Iowa, continued his dominance. He anchored an offense that ranked top five in points scored (29.5), total yards (399.6), passing yards (250.4), rushing yards (149.2), first downs (23.2) and third down conversion percentage (50.9%) in 2024. Wirfs plays with outstanding core strength, quickness out of his stance and power to move opponents off his frame. His lateral agility helped elongate rush lanes for Bucky Irving out of counter gap runs and his smooth movement played a role in the club achieving a balanced attack. Wirfs has a single moral code that he lives by on the gridiron: consistency.
"If they do not have to worry about me than I am doing my job," noted Wirfs on The Pivot. "I cannot control other stuff but I can control my job. Good, bad, different – however the play goes – you have to be consistent and just keep going to work. It is hard to be flashy as an offensive lineman or at any position where you are not getting the ball but I always thought, 'What can I do to lock this spot down to where they do not have to worry about me?'"
That mindset has led to a prolific five-year career.
