Three players in Tampa Bay Buccaneers history have won an NFL Defensive Player of the Year award and earned enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. We have counted down the top 47 players in team annals without yet mentioning any of them.
The implications are obvious, and we begin our unveiling of the top three with a player who helped redefine how his position was played at the most impactful level. Warren Sapp was a wildly entertaining player without whom the Buccaneers could not have constructed one of the greatest defenses in league history and turned the franchise into Super Bowl contenders.
Since 1976, more than 1,200 players have worn the Tampa Bay uniform during the regular season, each arriving in his own unique way and each leaving their mark on the club's legacy. This milestone season, we're honoring that impact by naming the Top 50 Players in Buccaneers history. That list was shaped by fan voting throughout the offseason, alongside input from Tampa Bay media and team representatives. And now it is being unveiled.
The Top 50 list has been revealed over the course of 10 days, concluding on Thursday night with the players who landed in spots 10 to 1. We've recruited some of the players who made the list to help us share their own stories and celebrate their teammates and predecessors in a series of breakdown videos. Click here to watch the video reveal of the numbers 30-21. We covered the first five players on that list in one post and are now devoting dedicated stories to each player who landed in the top five. At this point, any of these players could have credibly been chosen as the number-one Buccaneer of all time, including our current subject who came at #3.
3. DT Warren Sapp, 1995-2003
When Warren Sapp first became a Buccaneer as the 12th-overall pick in the 2005 draft, he initially wanted to be assigned jersey #76, which he had worn at Miami. Since that number was already occupied, he was convinced to take #99 and make it famous, which is exactly what he did. No other Buccaneer has ever worn #99 since or will wear it in the future; it was retired by the organization in 2013 after he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Sapp, in fact, has the distinction of being the first player in Buccaneers history to be voted into the Hall of Fame in his first year on the ballot. His running mate, Derrick Brooks, duplicated the feat a year later but few players in franchise history have been such obvious locks for enshrinement in Canton. Sapp finished his career with 96.5 career sacks, the third most ever by a defensive tackle, and 77.0 of those came during his Buccaneer tenure, putting him second on the team's all-time list just behind Lee Roy Selmon's 78.5.
Sapp was also a showman, building long-lasting and friendly rivals with other NFL greats, such as Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre. Sapp had another 5.5 sacks in postseason play, including three of Favre in a memorable 1997 playoff contest at Lambeau Field and another one in the franchise's first Super Bowl win, a 48-21 drubbing of Oakland in Super Bowl XXXVII.
After he recorded 3.0 sacks in eight starts as a rookie, Sapp saw his career take off like a rocket when Tony Dungy and Monte Kiffin arrived the next year. Perhaps the most indispensable player in the Buccaneers' legendary defenses of the late '90s and early '00s, Sapp was named an Associated Press All-Pro for six straight seasons, the first two as a second-team selection and the last four on the first team. He also went to seven Pro Bowls as a Buccaneer, the second most in team history to Brooks' 11 selections.
After getting 9.0 sacks in his first year in Dungy's system, Sapp had his first double-digit campaign and went to his first Pro Bowl after collecting 10.5 of them in 1997. He would later top that with 12.5 sacks in 1999 – the year he won the aforementioned NFL Defensive Player of the Year award – and a career-best 16.5 in 2000. He was third in the DPOTY voting that season. Those 16.5 sacks would stand as the Buccaneers' single season record until Shaquil Barrett broke it in 2019, and it is still the second-highest total on the list.
Sapp was named to the NFL's All-Decade Teams for both the 1990s and the 2000s, and he was inducted into the Buccaneers' Ring of Honor in 2013, shortly after getting his bronze bust in Canton. One of the very best defenders for a franchise known for stars on that side of the ball, Sapp was brash and more than willing to trade chatter with opponents, but he always backed up his words with his play.
