In 2000, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were coming off a dramatic run to the 1999 NFC Championship Game in St. Louis and a near-miss at the franchise's first-ever Super Bowl appearance. The Buccaneers had the reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year, Warren Sapp, anchoring what was developing into one of the best defenses in league history and an offense led by the Thunder & Lightning duo of Mike Alstott and Warrick Dunn. Tampa Bay had Super Bowl aspirations in 2000, and their eyes on a bit of NFL history.
See, Super Bowl XXXV was set to be contested at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, the Buccaneers' home field. The NFL had been staging Super Bowls since 1966, moving it from city to city year after year, and to that point no team had ever played a championship game in their own home stadium, let alone win one. The Bucs wanted to be first.
Alas, Tampa Bay lost in the Wild Card round of the 2000 playoffs and it would be the Baltimore Ravens that won Super Bowl XXXV, defeating the New York Giants. History would have to wait. But when that wait finally ended, 55 years into the Super Bowl era, it was indeed the Buccaneers who were ready to claim their destiny.
Over the last month, fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have been voting in an NCAA-style tournament bracket featuring the "50 Seasons Best Moments Presented by Ticketmaster." That bracket is down to the Final Four, and all four moments are among the most lasting, most remarkable events ever to unfold in a half-century of Buccaneers football. Over the next week, fans will determine which of those four stands alone as the best moment in team history.
The one that should come out on top: The Buccaneers becoming the first team in NFL history to play and to win a Super Bowl on its own home field.
The Buccaneers may have made homefield history in the 2020 playoffs, but they had to travel down a long road to get there. As a Wild Card team and the fifth seed in the NFC field, the Bucs had to play three straight road games in order to punch their ticket to the big one at the end. They knocked off Washington in the Wild Card round, got revenge against the archrival Saints in the Divisional Round and walked out of Lambeau Field with an enormous win the conference championship game. In the process, Tom Brady and the Bucs bested two other Hall of Fame-bound quarterbacks in Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers.
After the win in Green Bay, the Bucs only had to take one more flight that season, as Super Bowl LV was set to be played at Raymond James Stadium. The defending-champion Kansas City Chiefs and all-world quarterback Patrick Mahomes were favored to win a second straight title, but the Buccaneers had designs on more than being "the first team ever to play a Super Bowl at home." Brady threw three touchdown passes and won his fifth Super Bowl MVP award and a swarming Bucs' defense hounded Mahomes relentlessly, resulting in the first game in which he started that the Chiefs failed to score a touchdown. The result was an utterly convincing 31-9 decision that made the Buccaneers league champions for the second time, in a way no other team had ever accomplished.
