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, we look at the top rushing seasons in team history, in terms of yards. There have been 13 individual 1,000-yard rushing seasons for the Buccaneers over the past 49 years, achieved by nine different players, but the top five is dominated by two names. Interestingly, no Buccaneer has yet to record three separate 1,000-yard rushing seasons; perhaps Bucky Irving, who went for 1,122 yards as a rookie last year will become the first.

Irving, by the way, was the fifth Tampa Bay rookie to post a 1,000-yard rushing season, joining Errict Rhett (1994), Cadillac Williams (2005), LeGarrette Blount (2010) and Doug Martin (2012). That means more than a third of the 1,000-yard rushing seasons in franchise history were recorded by rookies, which is odd.

The Top Five Rushing Yardage Seasons in Buccaneers History

1. James Wilder, 1,544 yards, 1984

Wilder’s 1984 season remains one of the most remarkable ones posted by any player at any position in Bucs history. Wilder essentially was Tampa Bay’s offense in 1984, leading the team in rushing yards and receptions (85). He set an NFL record with 407 carries and was the first player ever to top 400 totes in a season. (His record was later broken by Jamal Anderson with 410 in 1998 and then Larry Johnson with 416 in 2006.) Wilder accounted for 84.3% of the Buccaneers’ carries in 1984 and 60.2% of their touches. One way or another, he was getting the football on three out of every five plays.

Near the end of the season, Wilder was approaching the NFL record for yards from scrimmage in a season and Head Coach John McKay, in his final season at the helm, was keenly aware of it. In the season finale against the New York Jets, with the game already well in hand for the Buccaneers, McKay famously made several decisions in order to get the ball to Wilder a few more times, including a series of onside kicks that were marred by penalties and instructions to let the Jets score with a minute left in order to have one more offensive series. That backfired, as the Jets’ defense was fully aware the ball was going to Wilder and stopped him for a total of zero yards on three carries. Wilder finished with 2,229 yards from scrimmage but the record went instead to the Rams’ Eric Dickerson, who had pushed his 1984 total to 2,244 yards two days earlier.

2. Doug Martin, 1,454 yards, 2012

After drafting Alabama safety Mark Barron with the seventh overall pick in 2012, the Buccaneers traded back into the bottom of the first round to nab Martin, the Boise State running back, at number 31. Martin ended up having a much bigger impact on the franchise than Barron (though not as big as 2012 second-round pick Lavonte David), included the best season ever for a Bucs’ rookie running back.

Martin had 95 rushing yards in his first NFL game, a 16-10 win over Carolina, but didn’t get his first 100-yard outing until Week Seven. That was a 135-yard performance in Minnesota in which he also scored on a 64-yard receptions, but that was just a warmup for the following week when Martin would play in his hometown of Oakland.

On November 4, Martin produced the single greatest rushing performance in franchise history, propelling the Bucs to a 42-32 victory over the Raiders. Martin ran 25 times for 251 yards and four touchdowns, scoring on increasingly long breakaways of 45, 67 and 70 yards. He remains one of only two players in NFL history to record at least 250 rushing yards and at least four rushing touchdowns in a single game, joining Denver’s Mike Anderson, who had the exact same stat line (251, 4) in a win over the Saints in 2000.

Martin remains the only Buccaneer to get within 100 yards of the record Wilder set four decades ago.

3. Doug Martin, 1,402 yards, 2015

After his incredible rookie season, Martin struggled with injuries for the next two years and didn’t hit 1,000 rushing yards in 2013 and 2014 combined. However, he bounced back to play in all 16 games in 2015 and look like the same back he was in 2012 on the way to becoming the first, and still only, Buccaneer back with multiple 1,400-yard rushing seasons. He also caught 33 passes for 271 yards and while his rookie season was rewarded with a Pro Bowl berth in 2015 he was actually selected as a first-team Associated Press All-Pro. He and Mike Alstott are the only Buccaneer running backs ever to achieve that honor, and Alstott’s three first-team selections were all specifically at the fullback position.

Martin had four 100-yard rushing games in 2015, and three more in which he topped 90 yards. The peak came in Week 11 at Philadelphia, when he headlined a huge day for the Buccaneer offense with 27 carries for 235 yards (but, weirdly, no touchdowns). That 235-yard outing is the closest any Tampa Bay back has gotten to his own record of 251 rushing yards against Oakland in 2012. He owns two of the four 200-yard rushing performances in team annals, with Wilder and Warrick Dunn the only other backs to reach that mark.

4. James Wilder, 1,300 yards, 1985

Wilder’s follow-up to his do-everything campaign in 1984 wasn’t quite as prolific, but it wasn’t far off. His 1,300 yards stood as the second-best rushing season in team history until Martin came along in 2012, and he caught another 53 passes. His 365 carries also didn’t quite match the 407 he had the year before, but still remain the second-most in a season ever for the Buccaneers. No other Buccaneer back has ever hit 350 carries in a single season.

Wilder picked right up where he had left off the year before, topping 100 rushing yards in each of the Bucs’ first four games. In Week Two against the Vikings, Wilder not only carried 22 times for 113 yards and a touchdown but also caught 13 passes for another 71 yards. That stretch remains the only time in team history that a player has recorded four straight 100-yard rushing games, and if one includes the 1984 season finale against the Jets, it’s actually a streak of five in a row.

Wilder would have only one more 100-yard rushing game the rest of the way, but he surpassed 90 yards four more times, including three times in the last five weeks.

5. Ricky Bell, 1,263 yards, 1979

The first great running back in franchise history, Bell arrived in 1977 as the first-overall pick in the draft. That draft also saw Pittsburgh running back Tony Dorsett go to Dallas with the very next pick, but Head Coach John McKay’s USC ties likely influenced the choice of Bell. In the end, Bell’s NFL career, and his life, were cut short by dermatomyositis, which led to heart failure at the age of 29.

Bell missed time due to injuries in his first two seasons but showed promise in 1978 with 679 rushing yards and six touchdowns. It all came together for him and the Buccaneers in 1979, as he logged the first 1,000-yard rushing campaign in team history, helping propel the franchise to its first division title and playoff berth just four seasons into its existence. Bell punctuated that breakout campaign by carrying the ball 38 times for 142 yards in a playoff win over Philadelphia in Tampa Bay’s first playoff appearance.

Bell didn’t record his first 100-yard rushing game in 1979 until Week Seven, and through the first six games was on pace for a 928-yard season. Then he racked up five 100-yard games over the next 12 weeks, including three in the last five games as the Bucs successfully chased down the NFC Central title. In a torrential rainstorm in Week 16, Bell carried 39 times for 137 yards in an eventual 3-0 win that locked down the division crown.