Receiver Tez Johnson.

Joe is still chortling about how Tez Johnson has proven to be a really nice guy off the bench.

Even though several fans howled about why the Bucs even wasted a seventh-round pick on him.

He’s too slow! The haters said.

Good thing running in a straight line in a 40-yard dash in Indianapolis in the dead of winter has virtually no correlation with playing football.

(Think about it: If running fast in a straight line means a guy can play receiver or corner, every dude who ever made the Olympics as a sprinter or hurdler would be playing in the NFL.)

So Joe last week talked to Tez to find out how he got so wide ass open on his 64-yard catch against the Cowboys. It helped that he juked Cowboys corner DaRon Bland out of his jock strap.

“I just executed what we practiced all [that] week,” Tez said.

Tez was so wide open, Joe asked him if he thought he was too wide open, like he might have had way too much time to think about catching the ball and then drop it.

“It ended up falling to me,” Tez said with a smile. “You definitely want the ball after doing blowing past [Bland]. But at the same time, I didn’t know it was coming.”

Tez didn’t know because he was the third option on the play. The play showcased the rapid growth of Jalon Daniels; in only his second start, he knew to go through his progressions.

“I kind of recognized the coverage early and communicated that to [Chris Godwin] and we just executed the play,” Tez said. “And I was just open.

“That shows the growth [Daniels is] having each and every week,” Tez said. “So compared to his first start to now, and playing in prime time, he did really good.

“Good to see [Daniels] out there playing free, playing confident, and that’s what we want to see from our QB1.”

Now the next step is to find a way to have success this afternoon against the mighty Steelers and T.J. Watt.