Former NFL wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson has been out of the sport for nearly two decades, but when he scans his football past, one name still catches strays: former defensive tackle Warren Sapp. A shared Super Bowl ring with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did nothing to bury the tension between them. Johnson still sees Sapp as the teammate who resented his arrival from New York and the attention that came with it.

On Michael Irvin’s The White House podcast, Keyshawn was asked which teammates were “as*****s” during his time with the Bucs. Without missing a beat, Keyshawn went straight to Sapp in an expletive-filled take.

“Well, 99. Warren Sapp’s an as*****,” Johnson said. “He is. That’s my guy, but he’s an as*****. He’s a grade-A as*****. Because he’d just be talking all the time. Unnecessary, though.”

Irvin pointed out that the 2000-era Bucs were a defensive team. Johnson rejected the idea that Sapp had any reason to feel crowded by a wide receiver, saying, “No, but he shouldn’t be threatened by me.” Irvin then pointed to Sapp’s monumental presence in the locker room, but Keyshawn was ready with an answer.

“Okay, again, what did I do besides bring my presence?” Keyshawn asked. “Because I’m nice to everybody. We all going to dinner. But he, for some reason, just, the light was too bright coming from New York for him, [from] me. You take some of that shine. And he’s still a Hall of Famer. I ain’t going to never be a Hall of Famer, and don’t give a f*** and don’t want to be. But for him, I think it was something deeper. Like I always tell people, I ain’t got no problem with him. He got a problem with me.”

In Sapp’s own words, Johnson “wasn’t a leader,” had skipped offseason work and didn’t know the plays either following his trade to Tampa in 2000.

After just two seasons of watching Johnson fail, the Bucs brought in Joe Jurevicius and Keenan McCardell to take the team forward. The 2002 season awarded Sapp, Johnson, and the rest with the Super Bowl XXXVII ring. But Johnson only stayed with the team for one more season before being shipped off to the Dallas Cowboys in 2004.

Now, Johnson tells a different story about that same locker room. In a 2013 radio interview, Johnson revealed that Sapp would “try to bully” defensive end Chidi Ahanotu, pushing him until Ahanotu challenged him to a fight in front of teammates. Johnson noted that this was “because [Sapp] felt he was more superior than Chidi.” But when Ahanotu stood up to him, Johnson said Sapp “didn’t want no part of it,” a moment he used to paint Sapp as the aggressor who folded under pressure.

Their public shots have only sharpened over the years. On Fearless with Jason Whitlock in 2023, Sapp called Johnson Lazy, accused him of throwing quarterback Shaun King under the bus, and tied the Jurevicius and McCardell signings to Johnson’s failures as a leader. Hearing this, Johnson fired back on X, calling Sapp “an embarrassment to society” and asking him to “stop lying.”

It’s been years since both Johnson and Sapp hung up their cleats, but Keyshawn still lands on the same line when that Buccaneers locker room comes up: “He got a problem with me.” But does Sapp feel the same way?