1987 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season
NFL team season
The 1987 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season was the franchise's 12th season in the National Football League, the 12th playing their home games at Tampa Stadium, and the first under head coach Ray Perkins. It was a year of great change for the Buccaneers. Perkins had only needed three seasons (1979–1981) to build the New York Giants into a playoff team, and it was hoped that he would be able to repeat the feat with the Buccaneers. They improved over their 2–14 record from 1986 and finished 4–11.
The Buccaneers possessed the first overall pick in the NFL draft, and used it to select University of Miami quarterback Vinny Testaverde. The Buccaneers appeared changed and won four games early in the season, but they notably lost large leads in later games and fell from playoff contention after midseason. The season was marked by a 1987 players' strike in which one week's games were canceled and regular play was interrupted for a month, while NFL owners fielded teams of replacement players.
Overview
Perkins brought discipline to a team that had been described as "the country club of the NFL", and rebuilt the team with youth. Perkins claimed that the Buccaneers were more talented than the New York Giants team he had taken over in 1979, and selected a then-record 20 players in the 1987 NFL draft. He improved their conditioning program, and instituted three-a-day practices.
“1987 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season” enters the record as nFL team season. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tampa, Buccaneers and season can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“1987 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Tampa, Buccaneers and season provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4583938. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1979, 1981 and 1986.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “1987 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 1987 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season primary sources, 1987 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season archive and Tampa research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1987 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “1987 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.