While most of the top receiving campaigns in team history have occurred in the last dozen or so years, Mark Carrier's breakout season in 1989 remains high on the list

Scott Smith

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. It's the biggest games, the most prolific seasons and the most incredible careers. All of 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 the top pass-catching seasons for the Bucs over the past 49 campaigns, ranked by yardage, which in the end is more important than reception totals. For the record, the top five reception totals in team annals are 106 by Keyshawn Johnson in 2001, 104 by Chris Godwin in 2022, 98 by Godwin in 2021, 96 by Mike Evans in 2016 and a tie for fifth at 86 by Godwin in 2019 and Evans in 2018.

There have been 30 seasons of 1,000 or more yards by Buccaneer pass-catchers, more than a third of which belong to Evans. Godwin is next with four while both Vincent Jackson and Joey Galloway had three. Eleven different players have achieved the feat in a Buccaneers uniform, beginning with Kevin House in 1981 and extending to the current golden era of Evans and Godwin.

The Top Five Receiving Yardage Seasons in Buccaneers History

Evans has famously exceeded 1,000 yards in all 11 of his NFL seasons so far, the longest such streak to begin a player's career and tied with Jerry Rice for the longest streak at any point in a career. He's the franchise's all-time leader (by a long shot) in catches, receiving yards, touchdown receptions, total receptions and 100-yard games, so it is only fitting that he also owns the single-season record for yardage.

Evans broke the team record in his second Pro Bowl seasons and his fifth season overall, in which he played in all 16 games and brought in 86 passes for 1,524 yards and eight touchdowns, averaging a career-best 17.7 yards per grab. His haul was the product of two different quarterbacks, as Jameis Winston started nine games that season and Ryan Fitzpatrick opened the other seven. Yes, this was still a 16-game campaign; the NFL didn't add the 17th game until 2021.

Evans opened this season with seven catches for 147 yards in that memorable 48-40 shootout in New Orleans, still the highest-scoring Week One game in NFL history. That was one of his eight 100-yard games that year, one shy of the team record for a single season. Going into the final game of the season, Evans had 1,418 yards, which left him just five yards shy of breaking the record. He got that on his first catch of the day, a 19-yard gain six minutes into the first quarter, starting a drive that also ended in his 19-yard reception for a score.

A third-round draft pick in 1987, Carrier was the Buccaneers' career leader in receiving yards until Evans and Godwin came along. Surprisingly, however, this was his only 1,000-yard season in six years in Tampa. (He had one more with Carolina in 1995.) Carrier demolished the team's previous record of 1,176 receiving yards set by Kevin House eight years earlier.

In 1988, his second season, Carrier nearly got to 1,000, catching 57 passes for 970 yards, but that was second fiddle to another 1987 draft pick, Bruce Hill, who had his lone 1,000-yard season with 1,040. In 1989 that flipped and Carrier became Vinny Testaverde's go-to target with 86 receptions for 1,422 yards and nine touchdowns. Carrier set a still-standing record with nine 100-yard games, finishing with a flurry of four straight and five in the last six weeks.

For his efforts, Carrier was voted into the Pro Bowl, the lone selection of his career. He was the first wide receiver in franchise history to earn that honor. With two seasons in Cleveland four in Carolina, Carrier finished his very fine NFL career with 569 catches for 8,763 yards and 48 touchdowns.

Jackson continues to rank as one of the biggest home runs the Buccaneers have ever hit in free agency, though it's impossible to beat the moon shot that was Tom Brady in 2020. When Tampa Bay reeled in Jackson during the 2012 offseason, he was coming off a third 1,000-yard season in the last four years in San Diego. He had an average of 17.5 yards per catch over six years with the Chargers and he had been to the Pro Bowl following the 2009 and 2011 campaigns. Turns out, he was saving his best for the East Coast.

The Bucs' quarterback in 2012 was Josh Freeman, who had thrown for just over 7,000 yards over the previous two seasons combined. He and Jackson made a quick connection, leading to the first 4,000-yard passing season in franchise history. Jackson hauled in what was then a career-high 72 passes for 1,384 yards and eight touchdowns, leading the NFL with an average of 19.2 yards per reception. His catch total is the lowest for any Buccaneer player who has exceeded 1,300 yards or even 1,200 yards in a season.

Jackson caught five passes for 128 yards and a touchdown in his second game as a Buccaneer, one of his five 100-yard performances on the season. In Week Seven against New Orleans he caught seven passes for 216 yards, setting what remains the team's single-game record for receiving yards. Jackson would follow with additional 1,000-yard seasons in 2013 and 2014.

Last year, Godwin was on pace for a monstrous 121-catch, 1,399-yard, 12-touchdown campaign before suffering a dislocated ankle in Week Seven. That would have blown away the team's single-season mark for receptions but would only have beaten his previous career best for yards by about 70. In 2019, Godwin's third season after arriving as a third-round pick in 2017, he caught 86 passes for 1,333 yards and nine scores, finishing with career-best 15.5 yards per grab and earning a Pro Bowl invitation.

The Buccaneers' passing attack was particularly prolific that year, with Jameis Winston throwing for an NFL-high 5,109 yards and 33 touchdowns, and both Godwin and Evans topped the 1,000-yard mark. That was just the second time a Tampa Bay duo achieved that feat, after Evans and Jackson had pulled it off in 2014, though Evans and Godwin would do it again in 2021, 2002 and 2023.

Godwin might have had a shot at Evans' single-season record if he hadn't been sidelined for the last two games with a hamstring injury. Before that, he recorded six 100-yard games, including three in which he topped 150 yards. He and Evans are the only players in team history to have three games of 150-plus receiving yards in the same season, with Evans also doing it in 2015 and 2019. Godwin's biggest stretch of the season came from Weeks 5-7, when he snared a combined 29 passes for 448 yards and four touchdowns.

This was the first of Evans' six Pro Bowl seasons (so far), and it included what remains a career-best 96 catches. It was also his second season with a dozen touchdown catches in just three years in the NFL, which was a franchise single-season record until he topped it three more times from 2020-23.

Evans missed a 100-yard game by just one yard in the season opener, but later hit triple digits four times, topped by an 11-catch, 150-yard outing against Atlanta. This was one of his most consistently productive seasons, as he had at least four catches in all but one game and at least 50 yards in all but two of them.