Popular sports radio and television personality Adam Schein seems like a regular Bucs fans in the Tampa Bay area. He likes Bucs rock star general manager Mark Dominik and seems to believe in Bucs commander Greg Schiano.

But that belief is being tested.

First, Schein grew to distrust Freeman and last year said he trusted Christian Ponder more. And look who guided his team to the playoffs last year with big wins over playoff teams, one of which was on the road (a task records show Freeman is terrible at accomplishing).

Before the season, Schein hinted that the hero of the mob that bears his name, Mike Glennon, would eventually call the signals for the Bucs.

Now, three weeks into the season, with Freeman holding the best percentage of inaccuracy in the NFL at a galling 45 percent, Schein now seems to be turning on Schiano because Schiano banking on Freeman to turn the Bucs’ fortunes around. Schein explained Monday on SiriusXM Radio’s “Mad Dog Radio” channel.

“Who thought the Bucs were going to compete in that [Patriots] game?” Schein said with disgust dripping all over his words. “I mean, Earth to Greg Schiano: You might want to pull Josh Freeman. He is sucking the life out of your team! It’s just hard to watch him play right now.”

Well, Joe agrees with Schein in a couple of ways. It is painful to watch Freeman now. It has largely been through this 1-8 stretch for the Bucs. He huffs and puffs and has his house falls down upon him.

Joe really, really doesn’t think Schiano will bench Freeman. Schiano has to know his job is in hot water and the temperature rises with each loss. He’s not going to go down with the ship with a rookie quarterback.

The leader of the New Schiano Order seems to have heard the fan and media buzzing about Darrelle Revis allegedly being unhappy about playing too much zone defense.

Speaking on WDAE-AM 620 last night, Schiano told a fan caller, “Don’t buy the hype” when it comes to that chatter.

Revis, Schiano said, is in “1-on-1 man coverage” for “a high percentage of the time.”

Schiano explained that he would never ask a cornerback to cover 1-on-1 for an entire game, and that Revis will always have some snaps when he’s in zone coverage, and some where he’s in man and his teammates are zone, in addition to the defense playing a man scheme.

“Sometimes when enough people say it,” referring to Revis playing too much zone, “people believe it’s true,” Schiano said.

So there you have it. Revis, who played every defensive snap Sunday by Joe’s count, is being used the way a $1 million-a-game cornerback should be.

Wow, Bucs fans are teetering on the edge like Joe has never seen before.

Joe remembers there was a faction of fans fed up with Chucky’s spinning his wheels. Joe knows there was a tar-and-feather crowd who couldn’t wait to burn down Raheem Morris’ favorite South Tampa bar, if that’s what it took rid the franchise of him.

But Joe has never seen the current anger of Bucs fans and how quickly they have turned on Bucs commander Greg Schiano. Just a few short weeks ago, Bucs fans almost universally applauded his law-and-order approach, the New Schiano Order, and how he demanded players put out in practice or face a nasty tongue lashing.

Now? Wow.

Joe cannot count how many Twitterings he received in the past couple of days, since the Bucs offense laid an egg in New England, wanting Schiano gone now. In all caps no less.

How bad has it gotten? Well, likely the most revered man in the Tampa Bay area who sits behind a microphone, all around good guy, straight shooter and the voice of Tampa Bay, Tedd Webb of WFLA-AM 970, co-host of AM Tampa Bay, and no friend of Ron Reagan, Jr., took a rare venture to Twitter Sunday to unload on the crumbling Bucs, in particular, Bucs franchise quarterback Josh Freeman and commander Greg Schiano.

@TeddWebb1: If Schiano sticks with Josh, then Schiano is the problem!

Man, if Tedd Webb, on an all-news station whose listeners include impressionable casual football fans and plain hausfraus and yentas throughout the area — and more importantly, potential advertisers and folks with expendable income — has turned on you, things are bad and you are about toast.

Unless Freeman has a monumental turnaround, Joe simply cannot see him returning to the Bucs in 2014. With a fanbase that is so fed up with Freeman, rightly or wrongly, just how is the team expected to sell any tickets or more importantly, corporate sponsorships when Freeman is the face of the franchise?

And yes folks, a quarterback is always the face of the franchise.

Yes, Vincent Jackson has a lot of drops. So too does Doug Martin. Unlike other NFL QBs who are victimized by drops, somehow Josh Freeman cannot overcome them.

Joe just looked up quarterback stats and man, Freeman’s are just brutal. He leads (cough) the NFL in inaccuracy with a galling 45.7 percent.

Friends, that’s begging to be thrown out of town, especially in a contract year.

Yes, yes, yes. Joe knows Freeman victimized by drops. Please cite another NFL quarterback who has perfect receivers.

Joe has been trying to find accurate stats about dropped passes and cannot. The sites he finds are either wildly inaccurate (listing Vincent Jackson with two drops for example) or are simply not updated.

The thing Joe found that was interesting, most sites had Denver receivers, specifically Eric Decker, with a boatload of drops. Funny, Joe doesn’t hear people screaming from atop the Rocky Mountains about how those drops are killing Peyton Manning.

Joe knows Tom Brady has been a victim of a lot of drops. He somehow finds a way around them. That’s what good quarterbacks do.

Another funny stat: teams that appear to put the ball on the ground a lot are a combined 6-0.

Let’s be generous here. If we add the drops that Doug Martin and Kevin Ogletree have, along with Vincent Jackson and a few others, (why are people outing only Vincent Jackson for dropping passes and not Martin?), let’s give Freeman, say, 10 more completions, shall we? That gives him 53 completions on 94 attempts.

Freeman would still be in the bottom rung of completion percentage at 56.3 percent.

Sadly, this just reinforces something Joe has long thought about Freeman: He struggles to overcome adversity. He gets rattled.

Somehow, guys like Manning and Brady fight through adversity and, at times, make their teammates better. Has Freeman ever made his teammates look better? Not since 2010. It’s really the other way around. Bucs rock star general manager Mark Dominik has tried to stock the offense with stud players to make Freeman look better and play better.

To be fair, with tight end Tom Crabtree’s injury, Freeman has only three reliable targets, and two of them are having lousy years (see above) catching the ball. Hopefully, when Crabtree gets better, it will help Freeman out more as that should be a reliable fourth target.

NFL.com’s Gregg Rosenthal is of the mind a quarterback change for the Bucs is near.

Tampa’s offense struggled. Quarterback Josh Freeman was hurt by drops, but his shaky accuracy is the real issue. Rookie Mike Glennon was spotted warming up on the sideline in the second half. Coach Greg Schiano stuck with Freeman, but a signal-caller switch is coming. Bank on it.

Joe doesn’t see that happening. No, sorry Mike Glennon Mob, Freeman will likely be starting for the foreseeable future.

As for the distant future, 2014? Barring a major turnaround by Freeman, Joe’s not banking on it.

Perhaps it’s the curse of Myron Lewis, who was wearing No. 31 when the Bucs finally cut him this summer, but the No. 31 is haunting the Bucs this week.

Tampa Bay is ranked 31st in points scored (11.3 per game), 31st in yards per game (282), and 31st in passing yards (175 per game). And ProFootballTalk.com’s latest power rankings have the Bucs as the 31st best team in the NFL.

Statistically, the Bucs defense is faring much better. They’re middle of the pack in the main categories, tied for third in the NFL in sacks with 12.

The human armoire, Carl Nicks, shared his take on the recent report of Bucs players gathering in training camp to lodge unified complaints toGreg Schiano — about Greg Schiano.

Woody Cummings, of The Tampa Tribune, laid it out yesterday.

Nicks said the group that expressed concern over the nature of the Bucs’ camp workouts was made up entirely of newcomers that were not accustomed to Schiano’s disciplinary style.

“It was some of the guys that came from different teams or were rookies and they just weren’t used to it,” Nicks said. “The guys that were here last year, we’re used to it and to us it wasn’t that difficult.” 

Nicks also discussed the nature of a players-only meeting the Bucs held prior to the start of the season, saying it was largely an attempt to get all the players focused on performing as well as possible in the regular season.

As Joe’s written previously, so what if players think they’re being worked too hard and talk about it among themselves to get a message to their boss. Joe watched those 1990s training camp sessions at the University of Tampa. They make what goes on now look like a high school gym class.

Joe’s far more concerned about game-day coaching and lower-tier quarterback play than August adjustment issues.

For Joe, watching the Bucs offense is akin to swimming up stream. It’s a struggle.

This was on display Sunday when the Bucs tanked against the Patriots.

The Bucs moved the ball OK, until they started to smell the end zone, and ka-POW! Implosion.

The stat geeks at ProFootballFocus.com noticed the same thing and typed this nugget up.

Offensive Inconsistency

The three points on the scoreboard might lead you to believe it was a disastrous performance for Freeman (+0.6), but it wasn’t the worst we’ve seen from him, and there were in fact some positives. He threw a beautiful deep route to Mike Williams on his first pass of the game, but of course followed it up with an overthrow just three plays later. After Tampa Bay’s first drive ended in a missed field goal, their second drive was going well until Freeman forced a throw into the end zone that was nearly picked off by free safety Devin McCourty. He bounced back on the very next pass, however, to drop a corner route where only tight end Timothy Wright could catch it, but Wright was unable to haul it in and the Bucs settled for yet another field goal attempt, this time with the 3 points tacked on. Those sequences represent the day in a nutshell for the Bucs, as Freeman and his teammates worked to undo their good with just enough bad to keep them out of the end zone.

Ah, yes. The drops. As if no other NFL quarterback has to deal with receivers dropping passes. If you are bored, look at how many receivers Peyton Manning and Tom Brady have that are putting the ball on the ground. Don’t hear too many folks crying for them, do you?

Only with Josh Freeman does it seem that his 10 offensive teammates have to play perfect ball for the quarterback to have a solid day.

To be honest, Joe will take the Freeman of Week One and Week Two, who didn’t have a good game at all against the Jets or Saints, but when his team needed him the most, he put the Bucs in position to win the game with solid drives in the final minutes.

Give Joe clutch over numbers any day.

The somber Bucs locker room was open today and WDAE-AM 620 was there to cobble together notes and quotes from various Bucs players, roughly 24 hours after a shameful loss at New England where the Bucs offense managed just a measly field goal.

Some of the Bucs who were willing to talk were defensive tackle Gerald McCoy, guard Carl Nicks and safety Mark Barron.

Of course, Bucs commander Greg Schiano had his daily press conference.

As always, audio courtesy of Joe’s good friends at WDAE-AM 620.

Joe was a big $10,000 Pyramid fan when he was a kid. And for those familiar with the game show, the above quote would fall under the category of Things An NFL Head Coach Shouldn’t Say.

Unfortunately, Greg Schiano uttered just those words tonight to TJ Rives, host of Total Access on WDAE-AM 620.

Joe nearly had a seizure.

No matter the context, the words “you can’t load the entire roster in a two-year period” just can’t be spoken, especially when your 0-3 team is stocked with eight Pro Bowl players 30 years old and younger, plus emerging stars and/or first-round talents like Lavonte David, Mark Barron, Mike Williams and Josh Freeman, and your team is sitting on a pile of salary cap room.

It sounds like making excuses.

Does Schiano really believe the Bucs don’t have enough talent? A few days ago he said the Bucs had all the “components” to win now. Surely he knows his predecessor won 10 games in his second season with the same quarterback, and a lot less talent and a record number of rookies.

The Bucs had the ninth-ranked offense last season and added two legitimate superstars to the defense in the offseason. The roster is loaded in many areas. And in other areas rockstar general manager Mark Dominik and Schiano decided they’d rather sit on salary cap room than, using Schiano’s words, “load the entire roster.”

Joe hopes this was a just a slip of the tongue by Schiano, but sadly Joe suspects Schiano really believes what he said.

In the win-now NFL, coaches like Schiano don’t get a third year to “load the entire roster” while their team is getting worse. Owners typically prefer to let a new commander handle those duties.

With the Bucs offense teetering between pathetic and criminal, the team got a major scare when No. 1 receiver Vincent Jackson was lost during the ugly loss to the Patriots with a rib injury.

No need to run for the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, Bucs fans. It appears Jackson will be fine, per NFL insider Ian Rapoport, by way of Dan Hanzus of NFL.com.

NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport reported Monday that Jackson did not suffer any broken ribs Sunday and should be OK, according to a person who spoke with the player.

Jackson was injured in the third quarter of Tampa Bay’s 23-3 loss to the New England Patriots. He underwent tests Monday morning to determine the extent of the damage. The Buccaneers will host the Arizona Cardinals next Sunday.

Jackson has been one of the only bright spots on Tampa Bay’s anemic offense this season, leading the team with 15 receptions for 265 yards. Jackson hasn’t missed one game since 2010. We’d be surprised if that streak ends in Week 4.

Is Jackson having his best year of his career? Of course not. It’s hard to argue the Bucs are better off with him not on the field, despite him having a severe case of the dropsies.

The Bucs need Jackson at full strength, along with a healthy Mike Williams, or Bucs franchise quarterback Josh Freeman is toast.

Joe knows this will make about 15 percent of his readers so giddy they won’t be able to sleep for days. Yet this news is met by Joe with a big yawn.

Track star and part-time football player Jeff Demps was added to the Bucs’ active roster of 53 today, taking a roster spot left open after stalwart tight end and injury-prone Luke Stocker was placed on the injured reserve.

First on Demps, Joe doesn’t get why so many fans drool over him so much. He’s a part-time player who treats football as a hobby. Not sure how Demps is going to turn the Bucs around from putrid to average (good teams contend for the playoffs. This just in: the Bucs are not good).

Now on Stocker, Joe has been pretty adamant about this the past day or so. Having Stocker as your No. 2 tight end behind a guy that has never been a full-time starter in the NFL was inviting disaster. And look what happened.

Joe understands in Mike Sullivan’s offense a tight end is not a primary target, therefore it is a waste of cash to throw big money at the position. Joe gets that. But the front office all but set up the tight end position to fail. There had to be someone out there to sign in the offseason that was as talented as Stocker but wasn’t as injury prone.

Now the Bucs are grasping at straws hoping converted wide receivers (from the passing juggernaut of Rutgers) can haul the load.

Last year, Dallas Clark caught 47 passes from Bucs franchise quarterback Josh Freeman. Those are gone. Clark was a weapon.

Yes, Tom Crabtree has promise but when he got hurt, the team was left to hope that a perpetually hurt tight end could play. That blew up in the faces of the Bucs front office/coaching staff.

Look, Joe isn’t making excuses for Freeman but is trying to be fair. All quarterbacks have drops. Joe doesn’t see people screaming from mountaintops defending most other NFL quarterbacks because a ball or two was put on the ground, surely not when said offense couldn’t muster more than three points in a blowout loss.

But not having a reliable option for depth at both tight end and wide receiver sure as hell isn’t making Freeman’s job any easier. Freeman basically has but three targets: Vincent Jackson, Mike Williams and Doug Martin, and Jackson and Martin have been bitten by a bad case of the dropsies virus.

Greg Schiano explained what caused him to miss the Bucs’ team plane ride home from New England. His father became ill during the Pats-Bucs game and Schiano stayed with his dad while waiting for other family members to drive to the Boston area.

Schiano didn’t detail what happened, while speaking to media today, or when he learned of the problem. The head coach said his father was still there for testing.

Joe wishes the elder Mr. Schiano well.

(Joe has turned off comments on this post to avoid babysitting the infants that would poke fun at the situation.)

Greg Schiano endorsed and defended Josh Freeman today

Greg Schiano had plenty of short answers today for the Tampa Bay media.

“Details,” was the problem against the Patriots, Schiano said when asked what looked wrong when he studied the Patriots-Bucs game film.  

“The whole offensive unit. We need to be more precise,” Schiano said. “They’re schematic issues. … Just in general, offensive details.”

Schiano said make those fixes and we’ll “score a lot of points.”

Asked about making a change at quarterback, Schiano said “Josh is our starter.” Schiano repeated that phrase multiple times.

Schiano also talked about Freeman’s strength in extending plays and defended No. 5. “It’s hard to be the trigger man when some things aren’t going the way they’re supposed to.”

Joe just read a truly horrifying nugget that was passed on via ESPN.com’s Pat Yasinskas. It should sober any Bucs fan who is drowning his sorrows over yesterday’s gutless loss to the Patriots.

Bucs franchise quarterback Josh Freeman is on pace to obliterate the record for worst pass completion percentage set by the notorious JaMarcus Russell.

In Sunday’s loss to New England, Freeman completed 13 of 32 passes (40.6 percent) against four or fewer pass-rushers. Through three games, Freeman has completed a league-worst 40.7 percent of his passes in those situations.

Since the start of the 2006 season, which is as far back as current tracking data exists, the lowest completion percentage by a quarterback against four or fewer pass-rushers for a full season was 51 percent by JaMarcus Russell in 2009.

Yeah, it’s come to a point where Freeman’s getting mentioned with Russell. The sad part is Freeman’s on pace to beat Russell’s record.

There really are no words to express Joe’s disgust. “Unacceptable” doesn’t do Joe’s horror justice.

Yes, yes, yes, Freeman is the victim of untimely drops. Say every Bucs receiver has caught every one of Freeman’s passes with four or fewer linemen chasing him down. What does that make his completion percentage within these stats, 48 percent?

Oh, that makes everything so much better now! That changes the entire picture. Quick, Bucs rock star general manager Mark Dominik, sign Freeman to an extension, now! If you factor in those drops, why, Freeman is a veritable Jim Kelly, right?

No, Joe really doesn’t believe Freeman will get benched this season. And, no, at this point, Joe cannot foresee Freeman returning to the Bucs unless he immediately turns his fortunes completely around.

Anyone want to take odds that will happen?

Joe is still troubled by the news from NFL Network’s Albert Breer last week, claiming that prior to the season, enough Bucs players cried like spoiled children because their training camp practices were too hard.

It was bad enough that good guy Dashon Goldson called a team meeting to try to stem the bickering.

Of course, the Bucs are going to say all is good right now. But unless a player loses his cool in the locker room, it is difficult to believe one player will express disgust.

But for how long? Jarrett Bell of USA Today notes that for the Bucs and the other winless teams, it is full-on crisis mode.

Will outside criticism tear the team apart?

“Well, it is definitely a choice,” Buccaneers coach Greg Schiano said after falling 23-3 at New England. “It is their choice. I have great confidence this team will stick together.”

Stopping the grumbling is simple; Win games. That takes catching passes. That means completing passes. That means blocking. That means converting third (and fourth) downs. That means kicking makeable field goals.

Winning cures all ills. Winning is the best deodorant. May as well weed out any malcontents now and get them off the field.

For an offense to put points on the board, it has to move the chains. That is, unless you are going bombs away and completing 40-yard tosses to win games– not many do.

To move the chains you generally have to convert a third down or two at some point during a drive, much less the game.

Yesterday, the Bucs’ franchise-quarterback-led offense was miserable when the team found itself mired in third down situations, documents the “Custodian of Canton,”eye-RAH! Kaufman of The Tampa Tribune.

@IKaufmanTBO: Bucs were 5-for-14 on 3rd down and 0-for-4 on fourth down against the Patriots

While Joe applauds Bucs commander Greg Schiano for being agressive, his troops sure did a lousy job getting first downs.

You simply aren’t going to win many football games with those kind of numbers.

Joe gets that Doug Martin likely is a better No. 3 receiver than Kevin Ogletree, but that doesn’t say much.

Martin hasn’t shown good pass-catching skills all season yet the Bucs now seem to have added deep routes for Martin into the offense.

Joe doesn’t like it, which is why Joe posted the picture above from yesterday’s heinous loss to the Patriots. Martin doesn’t have the size, speed or leaping ability to be running post routes that are anything more than a decoy hoping for a breakdown in coverage.

The window to throw Martin the football is awfully tight, not Josh Freeman’s strength.

The Bucs would be better served finding a way to toss Martin successful swing passes, screen passes and checkdowns. It’s a mystery why that doesn’t happen.

It’s a great question: What are the Bucs doing on offense?

Joe hasn’t seen an offense with so little rhythm in a long time. The playcalling flummoxes Joe. At least on Sunday it was unpredictable for a change.

Former Bucs guard Ian Beckles (1990-1996) doesn’t get it, either. Speaking as co-host of the Ron and Ian show this morning on WDAE-AM 620, Beckles said Mike Sullivan is worse than Josh Freeman.

“Nobody can explain what they’re trying to do,” Beckles said. “Josh is not good, but Josh is just one of the problems we have offensively. … The scheme, offensively, is God-awful.”

As Joe’s written previously, it’s as if NFL defenses caught up to the Bucs offense last November and it hasn’t adjusted or recovered.

Joe, however, can’t hurl a truckload of blame on Sullivan yet. Joe would have to know whose decision it was to play not to lose in the closing seconds of the Saints and Jets losses. And the poor depth at receiver and tight end surely isn’t Sullivan’s fault.

Joe hates to quash the dreams of the Mike Glennon Mob, but here’s a bunch of reasons why the New Schiano Order won’t turn to the rookie anytime soon.

1) Playoffs: Joe and many fans might think the Bucs’ playoff hopes are gone. However, the coaching staff absolutely can’t think that way, definitely not at 0-3. That’s a great way to get fired. Right now, the Bucs can still get back into the mix with two consecutive home wins against teams with losing records. Josh Freeman plays great against teams with a losing record. 

2) Readiness: Glennon may not be ready. The guy didn’t exactly look great in the preseason. That’s no slight on Glennon. He’s got a very traditional skillset. And in a quarterback driven league, Glennon wouldn’t have lasted until the third round if he was considered NFL-ready.

3) Josh Freeman’s trade value: Freeman can be traded before Week 8. Before you laugh, you don’t know what injury might befall a starter in the league. Also, there still may be teams that consider up-and-down, 25-year-old Josh worthy of a shot, especially if he has another couple of “up” games in him. All it takes is one team. If Freeman were on the market in 2006, don’t you think Chucky would have made a move for him when Chris Simms went down? Once Freeman is out of the lineup, his trade value plummets.

4) Job Security: A permanent change at QB means Team Glazer gets involved in the decision-making process. Team Glazer might not react kindly to Greg Schiano telling them he just can’t win with Josh — in September. Team Glazer might harken back to when Freeman led the Bucs to a 14-8 stretch under Raheem Morris and wonder why Schiano can’t succeed with more talent.

5) Fan Outrage: Right now, Bucs fans are on the verge of insanity. A move to Glennon, and Glennon struggling, could have boos hurled at him by his first halftime. The fan base is that much on edge. Joe suspects the reaction to Glennon would be far more peaceful in, say, early November.

6) Mutiny: Only Bucs players collectively know how much they may or may not respect Freeman. And it’s unknown how much confidence Schiano has openly expressed in Freeman to his team. Yanking Freeman too soon, in the minds of the players, might not go over well. Players ultimately need to perceive the change is fair and in the best interest of the club. Nobody can argue a move to Glennon when the team is officially eliminated from the playoffs.