“He really was the last piece to the defensive puzzle,” Tony Dungy said. “The dominant pass rusher off the edge that we didn’t have.” When Simeon Rice arrived in Tampa in 2001, the Bucs defense already boasted Hall of Fame names—Sapp, Brooks, Lynch, Barber. But Rice wasn’t just a complementary piece; he turned a great defense into an all-time one. “What he had to do was learn to practice hard and play hard every play,” Dungy added. “Once he learned… the defense needed him every play to win the big games, he was a force.”
Now, more than two decades later, Rice will take his place among those legends. The Buccaneers announced that the former defensive end will be inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor at halftime of their Week 13 matchup against the Arizona Cardinals. It’s the latest chapter in a career that, by the numbers, already reads like a Hall of Fame résumé: 122 sacks, three Pro Bowls, a First-Team All-Pro selection, and a Defensive Rookie of the Year award.
Rice himself has long believed in the weight of what he brought to that historic unit. “That’s where I think it’s right behind the ’85 Bears,” he said of the 2002 Bucs defense. “I think it’s the ’85 Bears and then us, you know? And me being next to Warren (Sapp) was interesting because we started out rocky… I understood the assignment when I got here.” He came to Tampa with a mission. “If you bring me down, you’ll be in the Super Bowl either this year or next year, trust me,” he told the Bucs then. They brought him. He delivered.
Even after retirement, Rice never strayed far from football—or from peak condition. In 2017, at 43, he seriously offered to return to the team after a decade out of the league. “They say, ‘He’s 43.’ But I still train three times a day,” he said. “I’m still doing 360-degree dunks. They won’t even see me coming.” That was Simeon Rice: always ready, always relentless.
With this honor, Rice becomes the 16th member of the Bucs Ring of Honor. He joins his former teammates and coaches—Sapp, Brooks, Barber, Lynch, Dungy, Gruden—as well as Bucs icons like Lee Roy Selmon, Doug Williams, and Bruce Arians. His induction adds another layer to the legacy of that dominant 2002 team, whose championship season is still the gold standard in Tampa Bay.
The Bucs are set to hold a press conference with Rice on Monday. Last month, they foreshadowed this moment by inviting him to announce their second- and third-round picks at the NFL Draft. His presence was hard to miss—just like it was on the field. “A lot of guys see the complexity of the game,” Rice once said. “I see the simplicity.” That simplicity, paired with rare explosiveness, made him one of the most feared edge rushers of his era. Now, his name and No. 97 will hang above Raymond James Stadium—where it belongs.
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