In the spring of 1997, Rond\u00e9 Barber heard his name called at the NFL Draft. Twenty-nine years later, he is going to be on the other end of that life-changing announcement.<\/p>\n
While NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announces all the picks in the first round of the draft, the league lines up legends or current players to represent each team and announce the picks in the second and third rounds. This year, the Buccaneers will be represented by Barber, whose Hall of Fame career began in the third round in 1997.<\/p>\n
Barber is one of nine Pro Football Hall of Fame members who will be on hand on Pittsburgh next Friday night to announce picks for their former teams. The others are Jerome Bettis and John Stallworth (Pittsburgh), Jimbo Covert (Chicago), Tony Dorsett (Dallas), Calvin Johnson (Detroit), Curtis Martin (New York Jets), Drew Pearson (Dallas) and Dwight Stephenson (Miami).<\/p>\n
Barber played his entire 16-year career for the Buccaneers, making him the longest tenured player in franchise history. He is Tampa Bay’s all-time leader in games played (241), games started (232), interceptions (47) and non-offensive touchdowns (14). He is the only player in NFL history to surpass 40 interceptions and 25 sacks in his career and he ranks fourth in league annals with those 14 non-offensive touchdowns.<\/p>\n
Barber was the 66th-overall pick in the 1997 draft and, barring trades, he will be announcing the 46th-overall pick next Friday night. The 2026 NFL Draft begins on Thursday, April 23, with the first-round conducted that evening, beginning at 8:00 p.m. ET. The second and third rounds will take place the following night, beginning at 7:00 p.m. ET. The final four rounds will take place on Saturday, beginning at 12:00 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n
Each team is given eight minutes to submit its pick in the first round and seven minutes to do so in Round Two. That accelerates to five picks per minute in Round Three-Six and four minutes per pick in Round Seven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the spring of 1997, Rond\u00e9 Barber heard his name called at the NFL Draft. Twenty-nine years later,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[54521,589,104814,135,137,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-234967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-2026-nfl-draft","9":"tag-featured","10":"tag-ronde-barber","11":"tag-tampa","12":"tag-tampa-headlines","13":"tag-tampa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}