The women without the NFL Network in Joe’s reading audience will remember him as “The Bachelor.”

Gators fans will remember him as a former starting quarterback for Florida in the early years of the century.

Hardcore Giants fans will remember the eight games he played in two years for the Big Blue.

Most now know him as one of the top college football analysts on television, now slaving for the Kremlin of cable, BSPN.

He is Jesse Palmer. Joe caught up with Palmer during media day at the Super Bowl and Palmer, who was working for TSN out of Canada covering his sixth Super Bowl, was kind enough to give Joe his thoughts about the Bucs and quarterback Josh Freeman.

JoeBucsFan: What happened to the Bucs? They went from flirting with the playoffs to horrid in a matter of weeks.

Jesse Palmer: Obviously, there was a rookie head coach and a rookie quarterback playing the majority of the season. There was a lot of change. I think in the locker room, with that [also] comes change.

It is very, very rare to see a team succeed — the New York Jets did this with the same circumstances, a new coach and a new quarterback — I think there were so many growing pains that came along with that.

I think there were a lot of positives however, particularly down the stretch. I think the win on the road down at New Orleans was huge for the franchise. Hopefully that is something they can build on for next year.

Joe: You think the Saints just took the Bucs too lightly?

Palmer: Maybe a little bit so. [The Saints] still had a chance to win near the end of the game. They had special teams blunders — a punt returned for a touchdown and a missed a field goal — but you cannot take anything away from the physicality of the Bucs late in that game. They really showed they were willing to run the football. Freeman did a great job of managing that game. That was one of the bright spots to look forward to going into next season.

Joe: From a quarterback standpoint… the Bucs got rid of Jeff Jagodzinski just days before the season started. How much did that screw up Freeman? Because of Jagodzinski’s firing, he had to start from scratch. All he had learned through the OTAs through training camp, that was all out the window when Jagodzinski was fired.

Palmer: That’s certainly tough, there’s no question about that. I think there is a chemistry that gets developed between a coach and his quarterbacks and the offense. As soon as that is gone, as you said, you are starting from scratch in a very short time frame. I think in all fairness, that did have some impact early in the year in that offense.

Joe: Related to that, the Bucs are bringing in Alex Van Pelt as a new quarterback coach. Raheem Morris may only have one more year. You almost think he doesn’t have much job security when you look at attendance, there’s not much attendance. If he doesn’t turn things around this year, then Freeman gets another new offensive coordinator and another new quarterback coach. That would make three offensive coordinators in three years. How much will that stunt his growth?

Palmer: It has an impact. I played with Alex Smith in San Francisco and he went through some similar times. In his first four years he had four different offensive coordinators, four different systems, four different playbooks. The terminology was different each and every year. Those are very difficult sets of circumstances and situations to have to develop into as a quarterback. Nobody doubts the fact that Josh Freeman has the skill sets to be successful, but [so many quarterback coaches and offensive coordinators], man, that is tough.

It will be interesting to see how he gets into it with an entire offseason and mini camp under his belt which will help. The same coaching staff, same terminology, that will help.