Rondé Barber's pick-six to seal the 2002 NFC Championship Game is not only one of the most memorable NFL postseason plays ever, it is also the newly-crowned "Best Moment" in Tampa Bay Buccaneers franchise history. That was determined in a series of NCAA tournament bracket-style votes by Buccaneers fans over the last month. Symbolically, the man who authored that play told us who belongs at the top of the list when he hooked his left arm over his shoulder and pointed at the nameplate on his jersey while loping into the end zone. Yeah, it was Rondé all along.

Even if we concede that the heavy favorite did, in fact, come out the winner in our tournament, it's worth noting that there were plenty of other interesting results along the way as 64 moments were whittled down to one. There were some entries that, frankly, battled farther into the bracket than we had expected, and some that bowed out earlier than anticipated. As the numbers dwindled from 64 to 32 to 16 and so on, the matchups got tougher and some Cinderella stories emerged. Here are some of my reactions as to how the voting went down:

Everybody Loves Mike (Part 1)

Given that he probably has the most entertaining career highlight reel of any Buccaneer over the franchise's first half-century, it's fitting that at least one of his memorable plays advanced as deep as the Elite Eight. There may have been some more important plays in Alstott's career, such as the clinching touchdown in the 1997 drought-breaking playoff win or the do-or-die two-point conversion against Washington in 2005. Somehow, though, the highlight that always comes first to mind for this Buccaneer legend is the time he treated the Cleveland Browns' defense like it was a pinball game.

It was midway through the fourth quarter in Week Six of the 2002 Super Bowl season, the Bucs were already up 17-3 and their impenetrable defense was well on the way to limiting Tim Couch and the Browns' offense to 194 yards of offense. The game wasn't really in much doubt, so a 19-yard run by Alstott that opened a drive eventually ending in a punt really didn't impact the outcome of the game much, but that hardly mattered. It still turned into one of the most unforgettable moments of that championship season. Before he was brought down, Alstott came in contact with nine of the 11 defenders on the field. About 12 yards into the run he seemed to be stumbling to the ground, only to have a sidelong hit from another Brown propel him back to his feet as he continued on.

In Round one, voters chose that play over Joe Jurevicius's 71-yard catch-and-run in that same 2002 NFC Championship Game. Alstott's pinball maneuvering then beat out the recent game in New Orleans in which the Bucs dropped a team-record 594 yards on th Saints. To get into the Elite Eight, Alstott even buried the 1999 NFC Championship Game, in which the Bucs' defense shut down "The Greatest Show on Turf." Alas, Mr. Barber was waiting on the other side of that Red Bracket final and Alstott's run – like it never seemed to do against the Browns – came to an end.

Everybody Loves Mike (Part 2)

Similarly, the most prolific offensive player in Buccaneer history (by a long shot) was bound to make some noise in our tournament, and Mike Evans didn't disappoint. As it turned out, the Evans moment that Buc fans treasured the most was his most recent one. Sure, there might be a bit of recency bias in this voting trend, but it's hard to argue that the very last catch of Evans' 2024 season was his most emotional personal moment, and perhaps his most memorable so far.

Famously, Evans had started his career with 10 straight 1,000-yard receiving seasons, the only player to do that for even seven years. After missing nearly four full games at midseason with a hamstring injury, Evans had to turn up the volume down the stretch in order to make it 11 in a row, and he came into the Week 18 season finale against New Orleans needing 85 more yards to get there. If he made it, he would join Jerry Rice as the only two players with 11 consecutive 1,000-yard seasons at any point in their career. Job number one for the Buccaneers on this afternoon was sealing another NFC South title with a win, but there's no denying that Evans' record was a carrot everyone wanted to grab.

When Bucky Irving instinctively took an improvised pitch from Baker Mayfield all the way to the end zone with less than two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, it looked like the window might have closed on Evans' efforts, as he had 80 yards at the time. The Bucs' defense needed to protect an eight-point lead but it also wanted to save some time for the offense to run another play or two, presumedly in Evans' direction. A fourth-and-five stop at the Bucs' 32 did the trick with 40 seconds left. The offense took the field, Evans went in motion from right to left, Jalen McMillan and Sterling Shepard ran clear out routes and Mayfield hit Evans on a little hook about three yards past the line of scrimmage. Evans turned upfield, got nine yards and the celebration started as the clock ran out. His final tally: 1,004 yards, and a spot in NFL history.

Evans' last-minute heroics also made it to the Elite Eight, but then went one step further, winning the entire White Bracket to make the Final Four. In order, he out-dueled a 1999 game in Philadelphia in which Warren Sapp and the Bucs' defense sacked Donovan McNabb and Doug Pederson a total of nine times; Antoine Winfield Jr.'s iconic peace sign to Tyreek Hill in Super Bowl LV; the first round of the 1995 draft producing two Bucs Hall of Famers; and the Lombardi Trophy boat parade toss.

When the Bucs Came Marching In, Again

December 11, 1977 is one of the most memorable dates in Buccaneers history. After the expansion franchise had been doomed by restrictive roster-building opportunities to start their history with a league-record 26-game losing streak, the team finally tasted victory in the penultimate weekend of its second season. The Buccaneers beat the Saints, 33-14 on the strength of three pick-sixes, leading to New Orleans firing Head Coach Hank Stram. A huge crowd of Buccaneer fans awaited the team's arrival back in Tampa, and better days for the franchise were just around the corner.

Frankly, I expected this game to go very deep into the bracket, perhaps all the way to the Final Four. And it did win in the first round, getting more votes than Mike Evans catching the 100th touchdown of his career. But its run came to an end in Round Two when it ran into…another milestone win in New Orleans?

Yes, indeed. During the 2020 regular season, the Buccaneers faced the Saints twice and came away losses both times. They had, in fact, lost five straight games to their division rivals and some of those, such as a 38-3 drubbing at Raymond James Stadium midway through 2020, were of the lopsided variety. The Buccaneers closed the regular season on a hot streak to grab a Wild Card playoff berth, but the Saints won the NFC South for the fourth straight year. As such, after winning on the road in Washington in the Wild Card round, the Bucs were forced to head back to the Superdome for a rematch.

Fortunately, the Bucs got the win that mattered the most. In the final game of Drew Brees' career, the Bucs used a quartet of defensive takeaways to score the final 17 points of the game and win 30-20. That sent them to the NFC Championship Game and, eventually, Super Bowl LV. And, apparently, Buccaneer fans thought that it was a more important – or at least more memorable – win than the first one the franchise ever recorded.

Other Quick Notes:

- I was a bit surprised to see Doug Martin's record 251-yard, four-touchdown rushing performance against the Raiders in 2012 not go a little further. Inarguably the single greatest game by a Buccaneer in franchise annals, it didn't even make it out of the first round, losing right off the bat to the combined efforts of two other Tampa Bay running backs. The winning vote went to the game against Minnesota in 1998 – the only regular-season game the Vikings lost that year – in which both Mike Alstott and Warrick Dunn topped 100 rushing yards. That remains the only time that has ever happened in Buccaneer history.

- Turns out Baker Mayfield is pretty popular, too. His invigorating stiff-arm of Nick Bosa and fourth-down conversion against San Francisco last season had enough juice to beat out Shelton Quarles' team-record 98-yard interception return touchdown against the Packers in 2001. Mayfield's big day in Green Bay in 2023 fared even better. Leading the Buccaneers to a 34-20 road upset of Aaron Rodgers' Packers, Mayfield became the first, and still only, visiting quarterback ever to record a perfect passer rating in a game at Lambeau Field. That outing made it all the way to the Sweet 16 of the Orange Bracket before losing to the Bucs making homefield history in Super Bowl LV, an eventual tournament finalist.

- On the other half of that Orange Bracket, another big moment in Lambeau fared very well, and this was expected. Scotty Miller's 39-yard touchdown catch just before halftime of the 2020 NFC Championship Game is quite clearly one of the fans' favorite moments from that entire Super Bowl LV run.