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, our focus is on interceptions, one of the more vanishing resources of the NFL. In 1981, when a strong Buccaneers defense picked off 32 passes (an average of 2.0 per game), there were 609 interceptions across the NFL, or nearly 22 per team. The 2002 Super Bowl-winning Buccaneers, who sported one of the best pass defenses in league history, recorded 31 interceptions, but the league as a whole was down to 528 picks, or 16.5 per team.
The next time Tampa Bay hoisted the Lombardi Trophy, in 2020, the whole team combined for 15 interceptions and the NFL had 256 picks across the board, exactly one per game. Last year, to Todd Bowles' great chagrin, the Buccaneers snared just seven interceptions, despite the "17th game" meaning there were 272 total contests across the league instead of 256. Keep in mind that every entry in the list below, which belongs to a single player in a single season, includes at least seven interceptions. So pour one out for bygone days of the clockwork interception, your author's favorite play in all of sports, and let's see who did it best as a Buccaneer.
The Top Five Interception Seasons in Buccaneers History
- Rondé Barber, 10 interceptions, 2001
While it is fitting that Barber, a Hall of Famer and by far the team's career leader in interceptions, is at the top of this list, the 2001 season was something of an outlier for him. Barber got to 47 picks by playing at a high level year after year for 16 seasons, never missing a game and rarely failing to capitalize on an opportunity when the ball came his way, but he only surpassed five interceptions in a season once in his career.
Obviously, this was that season. Half of Barber's six career multi-interception games were fashioned in this campaign, including a three-pick outing against one of his favorite targets, New Orleans quarterback Aaron Brooks. In a critical Week 15 win over the Saints, Barber starred in a 48-21 thrashing, returning one of his three picks for a 36-yard touchdown to cap the scoring. Barber also victimized Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart with two picks in a Week Six loss and did the same to the Lions' Charlie Batch three weeks later in a win in Detroit.
This was one of the three times that a Buccaneer defender has tied for the league lead in interceptions, though none have ever captured the sole title for picks in a season. Browns rookie cornerback Anthony Henry also had 10 interceptions in 2001. The other two occasions of a Buccaneer tying for the NFL's interception crown are also on this list.
- Cedric Brown, 9 interceptions
Brown was the first great interceptor in Bucs history and a big part of an increasingly good defense from 1976-84. At the time he finished his NFL career, he was the team's all-time leader in interceptions with 29, a mark that would stand until the late 1990s. In his second season as a starter for the Bucs, in 1978, he racked up six picks, but he was able to top that three years later on a 1981 Bucs team that won the franchise's second division title.
Brown got to nine picks with a late-season surge that helped the Bucs win four of their last five games to edge out Detroit for the NFC Central crown. He had two interceptions in a Week Five win over the Lions but those were his only two thefts in the Bucs' first 10 games. Over the last seven weeks, he snared seven more, including two returned for touchdowns. Brown's two picks and a score in Week 12 were part of 37-3 thrashing of the Packers, and he got two more in the season-capping winner-take-all 20-17 win in Detroit. His first pick against the Lions in that memorable showdown came inside the Bucs' 10-yard line and was followed one play later by Doug Williams' 84-yard touchdown pass to Kevin House.
- Brian Kelly, 8 interceptions, 2002
Kelly, one of the more underrated players in franchise history, is seventh in team annals with 22 career interceptions, and more of a third of them came in the Bucs' first Super Bowl season. He and future Hall of Famer Rod Woodson tied for the league lead with eight interceptions in 2002. While that legendary '02 Bucs defense is best known for including future Hall of Famers Derrick Brooks, Warren Sapp, Rondé Barber and John Lynch, it was actually Kelly who led the way to an incredible team total of 47 takeaways.
Kelly had two multi-interception games in 2002, and both came in critical wins over former NFC Central foes. In Week 12, he had two of the Bucs' four picks off Brett Favre as the Bucs defeated the archrival Packers, 21-7. In the season finale against the Bears, played on the University of Illinois campus with a strong wind howling in one direction on a chilly night in Champaign, Kelly was a key figure in a 15-0 shutout that clinched a first-round bye. He had two of the four picks off green quarterback Henry Burris, snagging both interceptions in the span of three offensive snaps for the Bears in the fourth quarter.
4t. Donnie Abraham, 7 interceptions, 1999 and 2000
We noted above that Brown was the first interception champ in franchise history and Kelly was one of the Bucs' most underrated performer. Abraham was also both of those things. His 31 interceptions over six seasons in Tampa surpassed Brown's original mark of 29 and served as the franchise's career lead until Barber took the top spot in the 2000s. Abraham's average of roughly five interceptions per season for the Buccaneers was not a matter of peaks and valleys; he had at least five picks in five of those six campaigns.
A third-round pick in 1996, Abraham opened his career with a pair of five-interception seasons before dipping to one pick in 1998. In 1999, as part of a swarming Bucs defense that nearly dragged the team into the Super Bowl, Abraham was one of five players to tie for the league lead (including Woodson) in interceptions. During a memorable six-game winning streak in the second half of the season, Abraham had a flurry of five interceptions in three-week run against Atlanta, Seattle and Minnesota. In a tight win over the Falcons, with the Bucs clinging to a 12-10 lead in the game's final minute, Abraham returned an interception off Chris Chandler 47 yards for the clinching score.
Abraham had another seven interceptions in 2000 becoming the first, and still only, Buccaneer with multiple seven-pick seasons, let alone consecutive ones. This campaign was punctuated by two-pick games in blowout wins over Atlanta and Chicago.
4t. Jeremiah Castille, 7 interceptions, 1985
A third-round pick in 1983, Castille started for most of his four seasons in Tampa and recorded exactly half of his 14 career interceptions in 1985. He was a bright spot on a team that struggled to a 2-14 record, spreading his picks over seven different games.
While he spent the majority of his career in Tampa, Castille is best known as the Broncos player who stripped Cleveland's Earnest Byner at the goal line in the 1987 AFC Championship Game. That play is simply known as "The Fumble."
4t. Wayne Haddix, 7 interceptions, 1990
On a list that includes a Hall of Famer and three of the top seven interceptors in Bucs history, Haddix is a stark outlier. In 1990, he started all 16 games and led the team with seven interceptions, including three returned for touchdowns. In parts of three other seasons with three NFL teams, Haddix started 11 games and had zero interceptions.
The Buccaneers got Haddix as a free agent in 1990 after he had played parts of two seasons with the Giants before missing the 1989 season due to an Achilles tendon injury. He won a starting job in training camp and in his very first game with the Buccaneers intercepted two passes and returned one for a touchdown in a blowout win at Detroit. Haddix later had another two picks and a touchdown in a win over Green Bay.
Haddix's exploits, particularly the three touchdowns, gained him enough notoriety to earn a berth in the Pro Bowl after the 1990 season. He started four more games for the Buccaneers in 1991 but was released during the season.
