The five careers that have produced the most sacks for the Buccaneers are spread out over almost the entirety of franchise history, with two Hall of Famers closely bunched at the top of the list

Scott Smith

On Thursday, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers concluded their three-day minicamp and thus capped off their entire offseason training program. Coaches and veteran players will soon scatter to the win for one last extended and well-deserved break before training camp. (Rookies have to stick around a little big longer.) When they return, the 2025 season will be just around the corner, and it's a very noteworthy season at that. The Buccaneers and Seattle Seahawks started play in 1976 as the 27th and 28th NFL franchises, respectively and will be playing the 50th seasons in their respective histories. As we celebrate the Buccaneers' 50th season this year with a look back at the past 49 seasons plus a glimpse at what the next 50 may hold, we are highlighting some of the best games, seasons and careers in franchise history.

Today, our focus is on sacks. We have previously run down the topsingle-seasonsack accomplishments in Buccaneer annals, but now let's widen the scope to find the players who have racked up the most QB takedowns across their entire careers in Tampa. The two lists do contain mostly the same names, of course, but not necessarily in the same order. The five names on the list below span most of the Buccaneers five decades; Lee Roy Selmon was on the inaugural 1976 Bucs team and Shaquil Barrett returned to the roster last year. At least one of the five players below was on the active roster for all but 15 of the past 49 seasons (1985-94; 2004-09). Together, those five players combined to earn 23 Pro Bowl invitations while playing for Tampa Bay.

One note: The NFL did not make the sack an official statistic until 1982, so some sources have Selmon with just the 23.0 he got in his last three seasons, making Warren Sapp the franchise's all-time leader. However, the Buccaneers have always included sack totals for their players from before 1982 and list their leaders accordingly. Many sources, like Pro Football Reference, also now including pre-1982 sacks in player totals on some pages.

The Five Buccaneers with the Most Sacks in Franchise History

1. Lee Roy Selmon, 78.5 career, 1976-84

Selmon was the first college draft pick in franchise history and still one of the best the team has ever made. He became the first Buccaneer enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 1995 and is on the short list for any "best player in team history" debate.

The former Oklahoma star had his rookie season shortened to just eight games and 5.0 sacks, but he jumped all the way to a career-best 13.0 sacks in 1977, getting to that figure in the last 14-game season in NFL history. He was a second-team Associated Press All-Pro after his 11-sack third season and made the first of six straight Pro Bowl appearances in his fourth campaign, 1979. He also won NFC Defensive Player of the Year honors that season as the linchpin of a Tampa Bay defense that ranked first in the league and led the franchise to its first postseason appearance. With his 11.0 sacks, this was the third of four double-digit seasons for Selmon.

Selmon's fourth double-digit sack season was 1983, when he had 11.0 once again. He would get his final 8.0 sacks in 1984 before suffering a neck injury in that year's Pro Bowl that landed him on injured reserve in 1985 and led to his retirement after that. Selmon tragically passed away at the age of 56 in 2011.

Selmon averaged 8.72 sacks per season across his nine years in Buccaneer orange.

2. Warren Sapp, 77.0 sacks, 1995-2003

Selmon has been the franchise's all-time sack leader since his second season and he still owns the mark today, but Sapp certainly got close. He's got a clear lead in franchise history among interior lineman, his ability to consistently get pressure on the quarterback up the middle is the main reason he was the second Buccaneer to make it into the Hall of Fame, and the first to do so in his initial year of eligibility.

Like Selmon, Sapp also earned an NFL Defensive Player of the Year award, doing so in 1999 after a 12.5 sack season that was instrumental in getting the Buccaneers to the NFC Championship Game. He was also a first-team AP All-Pro four times, a second-team selection in two other seasons and a Pro Bowler for seven straight years from 1997-2003.

Also like Selmon, Sapp didn't have a big sack campaign as a rookie. He was only in the starting lineup for half the season and finished with 3.0 QB takedowns. However, Tony Dungy and Monte Kiffin arrived the next year and Sapp was a perfect fit in their defense, instantly jumping to 9.0 sacks in 1996 and 10.5 in 1997. That was the first of his three double-digit sack seasons as a Buccaneer; he would have one more during four seasons in Oakland.

Sapp's sack production peaked in 2000, when he had a whopping 16.5 of them, an incredible number for an interior pass rusher. That set a new franchise single-season record at the time, which then stood for almost two decades before Shaquil Barrett came along. He averaged 8.56 across his nine seasons with the Buccaneers.

3. Simeon Rice 69.5 sacks, 2001-06

Simeon Rice, who will be the next person inducted into the Buccaneers Ring of Honor at Raymond James Stadium this season, was considered the final piece that put the Tampa Bay defense of the late '90s and early '00s over the top, making it one of the best in NFL history. The third-overall pick in the 1996 draft had played five seasons in Arizona before coming to Tampa in 2021, and from 1998-2005 he led the NFL with 101.5 sacks in that span, more than such contemporaries as current Hall of Famers Michael Strahan and Jason Taylor.

Rice topped double digits in each of his first five seasons in Tampa and had done so three other times in Arizona. The 2002 Tampa Bay defense led the NFL in points and yards allowed in what is widely considered one of the best single-season defensive performances by any team in league annals. Rice led that squad with 15.5 sacks, his best total as a Buccaneer and one behind the 16.5 he had for the Cardinals in 1999.

Rice had another 15.0 sack season in 2003 and is the only player in franchise history with multiple 15-sack campaigns. He made the Pro Bowl after both of those seasons; he was a first-team AP All-Pro selection in '02 and a second-team choice in '03. Rice was also a force in the playoffs, with seen sacks across five games as a Buccaneer, including two in Super Bowl XXXVII.

Rice's final season in Tampa was his only unproductive one with the team, as he finished with just 2.0 sacks in eight games played. He would wrap up his NFL career with eight games and one sack for the Broncos and Colts in 2007. In all, Rice finished with 122.0 sacks in his 12-year career.

As a Buccaneer, Rice averaged 11.58 sacks per season. If one removes his 2006 season, Rice averaged 13.5 sacks per season for Tampa Bay from 2001-05.

4. Gerald McCoy, 54.5 sacks, 2010-18

McCoy is second to Sapp among interior linemen in Bucs history and he almost matched him in Pro Bowl invitations, getting six. He was also a first-team AP All-Pro choice in 2013 and a second-team selection in 2014 and 2016.

Like both Selmon and Sapp, McCoy didn't burst out of the gate with huge sack totals in his rookie season; in fact, after being drafted third overall in 2010, McCoy tallied just 4.0 sacks over his first two campaigns combined. That was largely due to some bad injury luck early in his career, which cost him 11 games in 2010-11.

However, after tallying 5.0 sacks in 2012, McCoy became one of the most consistent sack producers in franchise history, with at least five in seven straight seasons. Only Selmon and Sapp have longer streaks of five-sack seasons in franchise history, each with a run of eight.

Interestingly, though, McCoy is the only player on this list to not have a single double-digit sack season; he came the closest in 2013 with 9.5, his first-team All-Pro campaign. He followed that with two straight 8.5-sack seasons, one with 7.0 and two more with 6.0. After his nine seasons in Tampa, McCoy was released in the offseason in 2019 and played one season with the Panthers and one with the Raiders with a year on injured reserve in between.

In his nine Buccaneer seasons, McCoy averaged 6.06 sacks per season. That included an average of 7.21 over the last seven of those campaigns.

5. Shaquil Barrett, 45.0 sacks, 2019-24

Barrett only recently bumped David Logan out of the Bucs' top five when he had 3.0 sacks in 2022 to get to 40.5. (Logan has since been tied by Lavonte David for sixth place, as both currently have 39.0.) Barrett has technically played six seasons for the Buccaneers, but that included last year when he returned to Tampa from Miami in late December and only played in one game, with no sacks. An Achilles tendon injury in 2022 cost him more than half of that season and he has just 7.5 sacks over the last three years, but his first three in Tampa were so good that he's still in the top five on the career list.

Especially his first one. After spending four seasons in a reserve role in Denver and recording a total of 14.0 sacks, he came to Tampa for a chance at starting and ended up out-producing the Bucs' wildest dreams when they signed him. In 2019, Barrett became the first Buccaneer ever to lead the NFL in sacks in a season, demolishing Sapp's record with 19.5 of them. He got the last three in the Bucs' season finale to not only break a tie with Sapp but sneak by Arizona's Chandler Jones for the league's top spot.

After that sack barrage in 2019, Barrett earned the first of his two Pro Bowl nods, was a second-team AP All-Pro choice and finished fourth in the Defensive Player of the Year voting. Barrett's sack total fell to 8.0 during the 2020 regular season but he was a force in the playoffs with a team-high 4.0 sacks, including three in the NFC Championship Game in Green Bay and one in the dominant win over Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in Super Bowl LV.

Barrett got back to double digits with 10 sacks in 2021 and earned his second Pro Bowl nod. Over five seasons with the Buccaneers (not including his one-game cameo last year), he averaged 9.0 sacks per year.