Ronde Barber is in the Hall of Fame, and the legend of that Bucs defense grows again

TAMPA — The day belongs to Ronde Barber. The honor and legacy, too.

His election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Thursday evening is as gratifying as it is worthy for an athlete who played a pivotal role in the evolution of nickel cornerbacks in the modern NFL.

And while his bust in Canton will forever immortalize his career in football, it serves another purpose as well. It validates an entire generation of Tampa Bay fans who were certain they were seeing something special while watching the Bucs play defense in the early 2000s.

With Barber’s official designation as one of the NFL’s all-time greats, the Bucs now have four members of the same defense in the Hall of Fame.

Warren Sapp got there first, followed by Derrick Brooks and John Lynch. That’s a defensive lineman, a linebacker, a safety and a cornerback, proving that each level of that defense was something to behold.

And if that unit didn’t already register as one of the great defenses in NFL history, Barber’s honor certainly solidifies the thought today.

Only a handful of teams have had as many as four Hall of Famers on the defensive side of the ball at the same time, and no others have legitimately pulled it off in the last 40 years.

Oh, technically, the 49ers had four at the same time in the 90s, and Washington briefly managed the feat in 2000. But those were one-off teams. Deion Sanders was in Washington for one season before retiring, and Bruce Smith was finishing up his career after 15 years in Buffalo. The same was true in San Francisco in 1994 and ‘97, when Rod Woodson was around for a brief stopover, Chris Doleman showed up after a dozen seasons in Minnesota/Atlanta and Sanders played a total of 14 games.

The Bucs, on the other hand, were a different kind of beast.

All four of their Hall of Famers were drafted within five years of one another and would go on to play seven seasons together. Beginning in 1997, the year Barber was drafted in the third round, Tampa Bay was in the top 10 in the NFL in points and yards allowed every season the four were in the same huddle.

They blitzed, they created turnovers, they shut down running games. They growled, they taunted, they laughed. They showed us what dominance looked like up close, and the memories are forever fresh.

The Bucs defense reached its peak in 2002 when holding opponents to 12.5 points a game on the way to winning the Super Bowl. That was 9.7 points better than the NFL average that season. More than 20 years later, no other defense has outperformed the rest of the league by such a wide margin.

It was as if Tampa Bay had secrets no one else in the NFL understood. Tony Dungy had brought his defensive system with him in 1996 and general manager Rich McKay methodically set out to find the right pieces to make the Cover 2 excel.

The four Hall of Famers were the backbone, but they were not alone. Hardy Nickerson, Donnie Abraham, Simeon Rice and Shelton Quarles all made Pro Bowls during that defense’s heyday.

As for Barber, his story mirrors the ascension of the defense. Lynch, Sapp and Brooks created the foundation, but Barber’s mastery of the nickel corner position changed the trajectory. The Bucs had 14 consecutive losing seasons before he was drafted but reached the NFC Championship Game in his first season as a full-time starter. By 2001, he led the NFL in interceptions, and the next year Tampa Bay was in the Super Bowl.

It’s true, this defense never had a cool nickname. They weren’t the Purple People Eaters or the Steel Curtain or the Doomsday Defense. Also, they didn’t win as many titles as the Packers of the 1960s or the Steelers of the ‘70s.

And when it comes to debates about the greatest defenses of all time, the Bucs are usually behind the 1985 Bears and 2000 Ravens, and that feels about right. But the caveat is those teams had shorter lifespans.

What the Bucs did during the Lynch/Brooks/Sapp/Barber era compares favorably with just about any decade of defense the NFL has ever experienced.

But, of course, you know that. You saw them and, for a lot of years, you marveled at them.

And now that they can claim their own small corner of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the rest of the world knows, too.

In select company

There have been a half-dozen defenses with four or more Hall of Famers on the roster simultaneously for multiple seasons. The Bucs are the only one in the past four decades. The six teams and the years their defensive Hall of Famers played together:

• Tampa Bay, 1997-2003: Ronde Barber, Derrick Brooks, John Lynch, Warren Sapp

One Super Bowl win, five playoff appearances in seven-year span; four Hall of Famers

• Pittsburgh, 1974-80: Mel Blount, Joe Greene, Jack Ham, Jack Lambert, Donnie Shell

Four Super Bowls, six playoff appearances in seven-year span; five Hall of Famers

• Dallas, 1970-72: Herb Adderley, Cliff Harris, Bob Lilly, Mel Renfro

One Super Bowl, three playoff appearances in three years; four Hall of Famers

• Kansas City, 1969-71: Bobby Bell, Buck Buchanan, Curley Culp, Willie Lanier, Johnny Robinson, Emmitt Thomas

One Super Bowl, two playoff appearances in three-year span; six Hall of Famers

• Green Bay, 1965-69: Herb Adderley, Willie Davis, Henry Jordan, Ray Nitschke, Dave Robinson, Willie Wood

Won one NFL Championship, two Super Bowls in five years; six Hall of Famers

• Detroit, 1960-62: Alex Karras, Dick “Night Train” Lane, Yale Lary, Dick LeBeau, Joe Schmidt

No playoff appearances in three years; five Hall of Famers

John Romano can be reached at jromano@tampabay.com. Follow @romano_tbtimes.

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