The history of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is chock-full of weird moments. For a team that began its existence with an 0–26 record while donning creamsicle orange uniforms, “normal” was never really in the cards. That weirdness has been etched into franchise history, and it’s a big part of what makes the Bucs so unique and unforgettable.
So buckle up, these are the weirdest moments in Bucs history.
5 of the weirdest moments in Tampa Bay Buccaneers history
Greg Schiano’s infamous kneel-down controversy (2012)
The Buccaneers became public enemy No. 1 after a loss to the New York Giants in 2012.
With the Giants lined up in victory formation to kneel out a close 41-34 victory, Schiano sent his defense on an all-out blitz at quarterback Eli Manning.
The decision was extremely controversial, and Giants head coach Tom Coughlin chewed Schiano out face-to-face during the postgame handshake.
"I don't think you do that," Coughlin told the media after the game. "You don't do that in this league. Not only that, you jeopardize the offensive line, you jeopardize the quarterback. Thank goodness we didn't get anybody hurt — that I know of. A couple of linemen were late getting in."
"Obviously I think it's a little bit of a cheap shot," Manning said. "We're taking a knee, we're in a friendly way, and they're firing off, and that's a way to get someone hurt."
Schiano expressed zero remorse for the play. After all, it was only a one-score game and Schiano wanted to win by any means necessary.
"What I do with our football team is we fight until they tell us 'game over'. And there's nothing dirty about it. There's nothing illegal about it,” Schiano told the media after the game.
In an interview with NFL Network’s Melissa Stark, Schiano doubled down.
“I know one unwritten rule: we have to win. And if we still have a chance to win, we’re playing to win. Now if it’s a game that is out of reach and you do it, sure. But I wouldn’t put my own guys in harm’s way. Forget anybody else’s guys.”
Despite the negative press coverage, Schiano sent his players in attack mode again the following week in a 16-10 loss to the Dallas Cowboys.
Josh Freeman Goes Missing Before the Season Opener (2013)
One of the weirdest stories in Buccaneers history comes courtesy of respected Buccaneers insider Scott Reynolds of Pewter Report, who first revealed the details during a 2021 edition of the Pewter Report Podcast.
On the morning of the season opener against the New York Jets, starting quarterback Josh Freeman missed the first team bus from the hotel to the stadium. Head coach Greg Schiano initially assumed Freeman had overslept or was grabbing breakfast and would simply take the second bus.
But when Freeman also missed the second bus, concern quickly turned into panic.
“The Bucs staff is still at the team hotel and now they’re panicking. This is literally a couple hours before kickoff. They call Josh’s cell, no answer. They call Josh’s room, no answer. They knock on his hotel room door, no answer,” reported Reynolds.
Eventually, hotel security forced their way into Freeman’s room, where staff found the quarterback still asleep and, according to Reynolds' sources, inebriated in some way. He was rushed into the shower and helped onto the final bus, which the team held at the hotel specifically for him and made it to the stadium just in time.
When Freeman finally did arrive at the stadium, his start to the season was disastrous, to say the least. Freeman was forced to use a timeout to avoid a delay of penalty, but following the timeout, he took back-to-back delay of game penalties due to helmet communication issues Schiano gave him the green light to call his own play if the problem persisted, but Freeman clearly wasn’t in the mental space to do so.
He went on to take a sack on the next play after consecutive penalties, followed by a false start to set up a 3rd-and-35 on the team’s first drive of the season — a sign of things to come.
On the next drive, Freeman was unprepared for a snap which resulted in a loose ball that Freeman booted out of the end zone for a safety. The Buccaneers went on to lose the game 18-17, with that safety potentially being the difference in the game. Freeman finished the game completing under 50% of his passes, and throwing for one touchdown and one interception, while taking 3 sacks.
Safe to say, patience with Freeman wore thin at One Buc Place. He started just the first three games of the season, all losses, before the team pivoted to third-round rookie quarterback Mike Glennon as the starter for the rest of the season.
The locker room MRSA outbreak (2013)
Many of the strangest moments in Buccaneers history occurred during the Greg Schiano era, but perhaps none were weirder or more embarrassing than the locker room MRSA outbreak in 2013.
MRSA is a serious staph infection that is resistant to many common antibiotics.
During the 2013 season, three Buccaneers players — kicker Lawrence Tynes, guard Carl Nicks, and cornerback Johnthan Banks all contracted MRSA. Both Nicks and Tynes never played a down in the NFL again after contracting the infection.
"I left that facility on my own and found a doctor in town and said, 'Can you look at my toe because I think all the doctors at the Bucs are lying to me?,'" Tynes told ESPN’s Elizabeth Merrill. "And I took my sock off, he looks at my toe, without any scientific study or anything, he said, 'You have MRSA.' And I'm at a billion-dollar company with the supposed best doctors in the world, and not one of them told me that I had that? I know they knew I had it. They just didn't want me to have it."
Tynes entered a legal battle with the Buccaneers, accusing the team of failing to properly sanitize facilities, using dirty equipment, and concealing ongoing infections among other individuals visiting the team's facilities. which resulted in the untimely end to his NFL career.
The team settled with Tynes for an undisclosed amount in 2017, and Carl Nicks also reached a $3 million settlement with the team.
The MRSA outbreak was a public relations nightmare, and certainly one of the weirdest and darkest storylines in franchise history.
Bo says No: Bo Jackson rejects Buccaneers after being drafted No. 1 overall (1986)
Holding the No. 1 pick in the 1986 NFL Draft, the Buccaneers had a chance to land Bo Jackson, a generational running back who was also a star on the baseball diamond.
Former Buccaneers owner Hugh Culverhouse flew him to Tampa for a physical, and Jackson believes to this day that the team went on to report him to the NCAA for an infraction that made him ineligible for his senior season at Auburn. By flying him on a private jet for the pre-draft physical and meeting, the Buccaneers violated NCAA rules against college athletes receiving special benefits not available to the general student body.
“I put two and two together, and figured it out. They knew I was a first-round pick in football, but they wanted to get me away from baseball, so they got me ruled ineligible. I’m 100 percent convinced of that. They thought that would make me forget baseball,” Jackson said in a story by Bob Nightengale of USA Today.
“I told myself, ‘All right, if you screw me, I’m going to screw you twice as hard.’ If anybody else had drafted me, I would have gone, but I wasn’t going to play for that man.”
After refusing to play for Tampa Bay, Jackson joined the Oakland Raiders the following season and became a human highlight reel. He went on to make history as the first athlete named an All-Star in both the NFL and MLB, a legacy the Buccaneers missed out on due to their owner's shady business tactics.
Buccaneers draft the wrong player on draft day (1982)
In the 1982 NFL Draft, a simple miscommunication led to one of the most infamous draft blunders in Buccaneers history.
With the 17th overall pick, the Bucs were torn between Bethune-Cookman defensive end Booker Reese and Penn State guard Sean Farrell. Director of Player Personnel Ken Herock told eqiuipment manager and team representative Pat Marcuccillo to have both names ready while the front office made its final call. When the decision was made to go with Reese, Herock phoned Marcuccillo and told him to “turn it in.”
“You couldn’t hear a thing,” Marcuccillo told TheScore, explaining that a bad phone connection and the roar of fans at the draft drowned out the call. “On my children’s lives, the next two or three words I heard were, ‘Turn it in.’ I never heard ‘Turn in Sean,’ I never heard ‘Turn in Booker Reese.’ He said, ‘Turn it in,’ and the last name I had heard was Sean Farrell. So I turned it in.”
In a state of panic after drafting the wrong player and lacking a second-round draft pick, the Buccaneers traded away their first-round pick in the following year’s draft in order to fix their mistake and select Booker Reese in the second round at No. 32 overall.
Reese lasted just four years in the NFL, and registered only two sacks. After two and a half underwhelming seasons for Tampa Bay, they dealt Reese to the Rams for a measly 12th round draft pick.
Ironically, Farrell turned out to be the better player, spending five years with the Bucs and carving out an 11-year NFL career. The player they drafted accidentally was the correct choice all along, and Tampa Bay could’ve saved themselves the draft capital — and the embarrassment — if they had just stuck with Farrell.