Football is Deone Bucannon’s endless vacation. He needs nothing else to be happy.
He spent his offseason gaining 10 pounds of muscle. He looks like a young Adrian Wilson, chiseled and eager to hit anything that moves. He struggles to describe a single leisurely pursuit over the past four months, a time when Larry Fitzgerald probably filled up another passport.
“Shoot,” he said, searching. “What did I do? That’s a good question.”
Answer: He became a trendsetter.
Entering the 2016 season, Bucannon now represents a new type of safety-linebacker hybrid, a position that seems to be the NFL’s latest rage, the latest tactical adjustment in a never-ending game of chess.