In term of dropping the bag, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers cornerback and Super Bowl hero Sean Murphy-Bunting is having an all time moment.
Murphy-Bunting’s current team, the Arizona Cardinals, put him on the Non-Football Injury list on May 23. This rules him out for the entire 2025 season and makes it so the Cardinals won’t have to pay his $8 million salary this season and, quite possibly, his $7.5 million salary next season.
Murphy-Bunting signed a 3-year, $25.5 million free agent contract with the Cardinals that included $17.39 million in guaranteed money in March 2024, of which he has only collected approximately $10 million.
“Neither the Cardinals nor Murphy-Bunting have revealed the specifics of his injury,” The Arizona Republic’s Theo Mackie wrote. “The non-football injury list is a roster designation for players who are unable to practice due to either injuries unrelated to football or injuries that did not occur during NFL games or practices. Injuries sustained in training with private trainers, which nearly every NFL player utilizes, can land players on the list. Teams are not required to pay the base salary for players on the list … He will also not earn a per-game roster bonus that would have totaled $255,000 had he played all 17 games.”
Murphy-Bunting won Super Bowl With Buccaneers
Murphy-Bunting was a second round pick (No. 39 overall) in the 2019 NFL draft out of Central Michigan after he had 9 interceptions in 3 seasons and left school with one year of eligibility remaining.
Murphy-Bunting played in all 32 regular season games for the Buccaneers over his first 2 seasons, with 23 starts in which he had 114 tackles, 4 interceptions, 11 pass deflections and 2 forced fumbles. He also had 1 interception returned for a touchdown.
In the 2020 postseason, Murphy-Bunting cemented his name into Buccaneers’ franchise lore with 3 interceptions and 5 pass deflections to go with 19 tackles in just 4 games as helped lead Tampa Bay to its second Super Bowl win in franchise history.
Injuries took their toll over the next 2 seasons as he missed 13 regular season games and eventually lost his starting job to Jamel Dean. Murphy-Bunting played 2023 on a 1-year, $3.25 million contract with the Tennessee Titans and started a career high 14 games to go with 57 tackles, 2 interceptions, 8 pass deflections, 2 forced fumbles and 1 fumble recovery.
NFL Has Wild History of Offseason Injuries
There have been some notable cases of NFL players hurting themselves in the offseason — and some of the incidents have been not just career changing but life changing.
In July 2015, New York Giants edge rusher Jason Pierre-Paul essentially blew off half of his right hand in a fireworks accident, losing 3 fingers and telling doctors before he underwent surgery to simply “don’t cut off my hand.”
JPP returned to the Giants in the 2015 season and was eventually traded to the Buccaneers in 2018, where he was named to a Pro Bowl and won a Super Bowl with the Buccaneers in 2020 playing alongside Murphy-Bunting.
In perhaps the most famous non-football injury in NFL history, Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress shot himself in the leg in a New York City nightclub in November 2008. Burress eventually served 2 years in prison for the shooting and missed all of the 2009 and 2010 seasons while serving his sentence.
Burress eventually returned to the NFL for 3 seasons with the New York Jets and Pittsburgh Steelers.
