For close to a decade, Simeon Rice was the most dominant pass rusher in the NFL. That's not just a historical account of Rice's ascendent play in the late '90s and early '00s, it is literally a working definition of a Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive end.
From 1998 through 2005, a span of eight seasons, Rice led the NFL with 101.5 sacks, four more than New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014, in his second year of eligibility. Simeon Rice has now been eligible for the Hall of Fame for twelve years.
Strahan also had 101.0 sacks over the eight-year span from 1996 through 2003.
Since the sack became an official NFL statistic in 1982 and since then there have been 36 distinct eight-year spans, from 1982-89 to 2017-24. Every single player who has led the NFL in sacks over an eight-year span and is eligible for the Hall of Fame is already enshrined in the Hall of Fame except Simeon Rice.
In the chart below, which is sorted by the highest eight-year sack totals, only the top eight-year period as an NFL sack leader is listed for each player. For instance, Rice also led the NFL in sacks from 1999-2006 with 93.5 sacks, but his more productive 1998-2005 is displayed.
Every retired player other than Simeon Rice with 100 sacks over eight consecutive seasons has received a gold jacket in Canton.
Rice finished his career with 122.0 sacks and is currently ranked 21st in NFL history on the list of official career leaders in that category. The players at the top of the list are such first-ballot shoo-ins as Bruce Smith and Reggie White, both of whom had very long careers and enormous sack totals. Rice played 12 seasons, the same as Allen and one more than Derrick Thomas.
Of the players in the top 25, only five played 12 or fewer seasons. They are Rice (12), Thomas (11), Allen (12), Ware and J.J. Watt (12). Thomas, Allen and Ware are already in the Hall of Fame. Watt is a three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year who will first be eligible for the Hall in the Class of 2028. Of those five players, Rice ranks fourth with his 122.0 sacks but is also tied for the most 10-sack seasons and the only one who won a Super Bowl championship.
Rice first entered the NFL as a first-round draft pick by the Arizona Cardinals in 1996, chosen third overall. After five seasons in Arizona, during which he recorded 51.5 sacks, won the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year award and made the Pro Bowl in 1999. When he became an unrestricted free agent following the 2000 season, legendary Defensive Coordinator Monte Kiffin recruited the potent pass rusher to join what was becoming a star-studded defense, impressing upon Rice that he would be the final piece of the puzzle in what could be the best defense in the NFL.
Kiffin was right. After an 11.0 sack debut in Tampa in 2001, Rice blossomed into an Associated Press first-team All-Pro in 2002 as the Buccaneers fielded one of the greatest defenses in NFL history. Rice racked up 15.5 sacks, 50 tackles, one interception and 11 passes defensed during the regular season, then tacked on 4.0 more sacks during the Buccaneers' three-game run to victory in Super Bowl XXXVII. Two of those four sacks came in the 48-21 Super Bowl win over the Oakland Raiders, including one that forced Oakland to settle for a field goal on its first possession, after which Tampa Bay scored the next 34 points.
The '02 season is the best example of this. Tampa Bay's legendary defense in that season featured Sapp, the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year in Derrick Brooks and Hall of Famers in the secondary in John Lynch and Ronde Barber. But it would not have been nearly as dominant without Rice, who put up one of the best campaigns by a defensive end since the NFL began officially tracking sacks in 1982, as indicated by the excellent comparative statistical tool of "AV" employed by Pro Football Reference. Rice's 2002 campaign remains one of the best by a pass rusher in the sack era.
While Sapp and Brooks were both first-ballot selections to the Hall of Fame, Lynch was a finalist eight times before finally getting the call in 2021 while Barber took three years before being included in the Class of 2023. Those delays may have been in part due to voter's reluctance to put in multiple players from the same defense. If so, that same hesitation is likely being applied doubly to Rice now that there are four Bucs teammates from the same era in the Hall.
However, Rice deserves to be judged on his own merits, as Lynch and Barber eventually were. All four of those Buccaneers from the team's first Super Bowl era had résumés that stretched far beyond that one dominant 2002 season and made them all-time NFL greats in their own right. Brooks and Sapp both won NFL Defensive Player of the Year awards, Brooks is considered one of the best linebackers of his generation and Sapp helped redefine the defensive tackle position. Lynch was voted into nine Pro Bowls and is considered one of the hardest hitters in NFL history. Barber is the only player in NFL annals with at least 45 interceptions and at least 25 sacks.
And those Hall of Famers know Rice was just as crucial to the team's sustained success from 2001 to 2005.
"Simeon [was] one of the best, if not the best, pass-rushers of my generation," said Brooks. "I want to thank [him] for choosing Tampa when [he was] a free agent to make our defense complete."
Indeed, Simeon Rice was far from done after that incredible 2002 Super Bowl season. He would amass 41.0 more sacks over the next three seasons, ranking in the top five in the NFL in that category in each of those campaigns. In all, Rice finished in the top five in sacks in five of his 12 seasons, another feat that puts him in the company of Hall of Famers. Since the sack became official in 1982, only five since-retired players have recorded at least top five season finishes, and only two have more than Rice.
Rice first became eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013 but he wasn't on the initial list of roughly 125 candidates that year or the next. He first landed on that list in 2015 and has remained on it in every year since, but has only advanced to the semifinal stage in 2018 and 2020. During that span, the Hall has taken to enshrining a long list of players who fit a very similar profile to Rice.
Since Rice first became eligible for induction, the Hall of Fame has admitted eight edge rushers (4-3 defensive ends and outside linebackers) in a span of 13 classes. They are: Michael Strahan (2014), Charles Haley (2015), Kevin Greene (2016), Jason Taylor (2017), DeMarcus Ware (2023), Julius Peppers (2024), Dwight Freeney (2024) and Jared Allen (2025). Note how Rice's averages of sacks per season and sacks per game compare to those eight:
Nearly a decade as the NFL's best pass rusher. A critical contributor to a Super Bowl championship and a defense for the ages. Career accomplishments that match many of his contemporaries who are already enshrined in the Hall of Fame. A member of the exclusive 120-sack club. Rice has earned his place next to other all-time NFL greats.
