Most of the best individual sack seasons in Tampa Bay history are clustered around the teams first Super Bowl championship, but the top spot belongs to a much more recent QB hunter

Scott Smith

The 2025 season will be the 50th campaign for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the league's 27th franchise that began play in 1976. We're marking the occasion with a deep dive into that rich half-century of history, celebrating some of the greatest individual performances ever in a Buccaneer uniform. This allows us to remember some of the franchise's greatest moments but also set the bar for players who will chase history over the next 50 years.

Today, we examine the most prolific quarterback sack seasons for Buccaneer defenders. Most of the top five sack campaigns in team history are clustered around a six-year period that was part of the Bucs' dominant defensive run from the mid-'90s through the mid-'00s, but the number one spot was usurped not long ago.

One name you won't see on the list is Lee Roy Selmon, the first Buccaneer ever to be inducted into the Hall of Fame and still the franchise's career leader in sacks. Selmon's highest single-season total was 13.0 in 1977, and it's worth noting that was the last year the NFL schedule was just 14 games long. Selmon also hit double digits in sacks in three other campaigns. Marcus Jones also had a 13.0-sack season in 2000.

Oh, and if you had any lingering doubt about why thenext player going into the Buccaneers' Ring of Honoris Simeon Rice, you won't after checking out the list below.

The Top Five Sack Seasons in Buccaneers History

1. Shaquil Barrett, 19.5 sacks, 2019

Shaquil Barrett remains one of the best free agent signings in franchise history. Barrett originally entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent with the Broncos in 2014 and, after one season on the Denver practice squad, spent the next four seasons as a mostly rotational edge rusher. His highest single-season sack total in that span was 5.5, but the Buccaneers thought he was capable of producing bigger numbers in a more prominent role. Barrett was looking for just such an opportunity when he signed a one-year "prove-it" deal with Tampa Bay in 2019. He subsequently beat out Noah Spence for the starting job and immediately proceeded to make franchise history.

Barrett made an instant impact, with one sack in his first game as a Buccaneer, three in his second and four in his third. That last outing, against the Giants, allowed him to join Marcus Jones and Simeon Rice as the only players in Buccaneer annals to have four sacks in one game. With a total of 9.0 sacks in four September games, Barrett was named the NFC Defensive Player of the Month.

Barrett remained productive throughout the season, making a mark in the sack column in 11 of the Bucs' first 15 games. That sent him into the season finale with 16.5 sacks, which had already tied Warren Sapp for the franchise's single-season record. That meant Barrett only needed one more sack in the season finale against Atlanta at Raymond James Stadium to own the Bucs' record by himself, but the Buccaneers were hoping he would chase down another team milestone.

A four-sack game against Seattle in Week 16 had pushed Arizona's Chandler Jones to 19.0 on the season, making him the league leader heading into the final weekend. Could Barrett catch him and become the first Buccaneer ever to lead the league in sacks. That was a tall order, and it seemed unlikely to happen when Barrett had just one sack of Atlanta's Matt Ryan through the game's first 58 minutes. However, on the first play after the two-minute warning, Barrett got Ryan to the ground again, and then repeated the act three snaps later to give him three sacks in the game. The Bucs lost the game in overtime but Barrett finished the season with 19.5 sacks, a half-sack better than Chandler. However, the Cardinals' final game was beginning right about when the Bucs game ended, which led to an anxious three hours of viewing for those who cared about Barrett's sack-champion quest. In the end, Chandler was shut out and Barrett had the stop spot.

2. Warren Sapp, 16.5 sacks, 2000

It seems a bit strange that Warren Sapp won the NFL Defensive Player of the Year award in 1999, not in his most prolific 2000 season, but context obviously matters. The Buccaneers' defense was legendarily fierce in '99, dragging a pedestrian Tampa Bay offense to within a few minutes of the Super Bowl, while the 2000 team was a one-and-done Wild Card squad. Still, that latter season was the high-water mark in terms of sacks for the second Buccaneer ever to go into the Hall of Fame.

This was the middle of Sapp's seven-year run of consecutive Pro Bowl selections and it was the second out of four straight seasons he was named a first-team Associated Press All-Pro. He had racked up 12.5 sacks the year before in his DPOTY campaign, but he wasted no time in setting an even more blistering pace in 2000, with 5.5 sacks over the first three weeks of the season. He would end up with at least one sack in 11 of the Bucs' 16 games.

Lee Roy Selmon's franchise record of 13.0 sacks set in 1977 had stood for more than two decades, but Sapp surpassed it with a two-sack game in a win over Buffalo in the season's 12th game, giving him 13.5. He didn't add to that total over the next two weeks in wins over Miami and Dallas, but then closed strong with 2.0 against St. Louis in Week 16 (in the famous 38-35 Monday Night Football shootout) and 1.0 more in Week 17 at Green Bay. Sapp's final tally of 16.5 sacks stood as the team record almost as long as Selmon's original mark of 13.0.

3. Simeon Rice, 15.5 sacks, 2002

And now we begin the Simeon Rice portion of the show.

Monte Kiffin and the Buccaneers lured Rice to Tampa when he first hit free agency in 2001 after five seasons with the Arizona Cardinals, who drafted him third overall in 1996. Rice had already recorded three double-digit sack seasons, a Defensive Rookie of the Year award and a Pro Bowl selection at that point, and the Bucs believed he would be the final piece to put their fierce defense over the top.

Rice's 11-sack season in his debut with the Buccaneers was a great proof of concept, but only the start. In 2002, both he and that legendary Tampa defense peaked and the result was the first Super Bowl championship in franchise history. Rice led that defense with 15.5 sacks, finishing second in the NFL to future Hall of Famer Jason Taylor, and the Bucs absolutely terrorized opposing quarterbacks, holding them to a collective passer rating of get this 48.4.

Unlike the first two entries on the list, Rice actually did not get off to a fast start in 2002. He had only one sack through the first four weeks of the season (though he did have an interception and seven passes defensed by that point) and only 3.5 through the first seven games. That's a pace for an eight-sack season. But then he caught fire. His four straight two-sack games starting in Week Eight at Carolina helped fuel a four-game winning streak, and his three sacks in the next game after that, a loss at New Orleans, gave him five straight multi-sack games.

That made Rice just the second NFL player since the sack became an official statistic in 1982 to have a run of five straight games with two sacks each, joining Hall of Famer Kevin Greene. Rice is the only player to have such a run in a single season, and with the same team, as Greene's stretch spanned the 1997-98 campaigns for San Francisco and then Carolina.

4. Simeon Rice, 15.0 sacks, 2003

The Buccaneers' Super Bowl title defense in 2003 did not go as planned, and injuries hit the roster hard, but Rice played all 16 games and hit the 15-sack mark for the second season in a row. In this case, he again ranked second in the NFL (tied with two others) behind Hall of Famer Michael Strahan. Rice also led the NFL in 2003 with six forced fumbles and intercepted a pair of passes, all of it adding up to another Pro Bowl invitation and a second-team Associated Press All-Pro nod.

Rice's sacks in this season came in bursts, in particular a four-sack performance in a 35-13 drubbing of Washington in Week Six. That tied the team's single-game record and was just the second four-sack game in Buccaneer annals. Rice also had a three-sack game in a win at New Orleans in Week 14. That put him at 15 sacks for the season and within striking distance of Sapp's then-team record, but Rice was shut out in the last three games.

5. Simeon Rice, 14.0 sacks, 2005

After logging a dozen sacks for a 2004 Buccaneers team that cratered badly, Rice came back with yet another top-five sack campaign in 2005, helping the team rebound to an 11-5 record and a division title with his 14 QB takedowns. This was the last of five straight full seasons with the Buccaneers, all of which ended in double-digit sacks, which is rather remarkable.

Rice didn't have huge peaks and valleys in his sack totals this season; he simply produced week after week. He had at least one sack in 12 of the Bucs' 16 games, but no more than two in any of them. He also recorded another six forced fumbles, and he added another sack in the Bucs' playoff loss to Washington.