Next up in our Video Series designed to take a look back at a 2010 Bucs player, Ronde Barber is about to return for his 14th season as a Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Unlike several other Bucs players who returned for one more shot, Barber turned his last season into a model campaign for how to show everyone your not over the hill! Barber did a ‘Coast to Coast’ if you will in 2010, actually playing lights out in not only his first game, but all the way through to and including his last!
Barber starts the season off by probably saving the Bucs, who were down 14-3 to the Cleveland Browns and probably about to surrender even more points. Jake Delhomme had the Browns moving, and getting ready to at least score another FG that would have given the Bucs a 2 touchdown deficit to come back from in the second half.
Could the Bucs have done it? No telling, we will probably never know, because Delhomme, getting major pressure at the heels from Stylez G White and being Charged by rookie DT Gerald McCoy, released the ball and the ever opportunistic Ronde picked the ball off in the flat and raced down the sideline. 2010 Brown sensation Peyton Hillis hawked down the exasperated Barber who normally would have scored on that Opportunity, but had he done so, we would have been robbed of our own rookie sensation Mike Williams first touchdown- a ‘juggle job’ as Gene Deckerhoff would allude to on the radio call of the game.
Score at the half, 14-10 Browns, more manageable for a team still trying to figure out who and what they were going to be.
Barber would finish the year 3rd in team tackles (102), 2nd in Interceptions (3), and 1st place in passes defended (16, ahead of E.J. Biggers 12 who was ahead of Talib’s 11) for the Bucs. Speaking of QB pressure, only White and McCoy would finish the year off with more pressures than Barber (7), ending the season ahead of Kyle Moore and Michael Bennett.
In the season finale, Barber was flying around like a veteran in his prime, nearly intercepting Drew Brees passes, knocking them down and blowing up end arounds and short passes, preventing the Saints from getting back into the game in a timely fashion.
Barber will return for 2011, probably his last as the only surviving Bucs player left from the Super Bowl Squad of Bucs in 2002.
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