Florida DE Dante Fowler, a hometown guy, isn’t worked up about a chance to play for the Bucs.

Joe has repeatedly typed over the past few months that the Bucs at a crossroads. Tampa Bay could pick Jameis Winston, infuse massive buzz in the team and the community and set themselves up for playoff runs in the future. [read more]

Greg Bedard of theMMQB.com is dubious of Lovie Smith’s embracing of Jameis WInston.

So the Bucs are taking Jameis Winston? One prominent NFL scribe believes Bucs coach Lovie Smith confirmed the opposite.

Wednesday, when Lovie took to BSPN radio and said he was “comfortable” coaching Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston, many quickly concluded Winston is the leader in the clubhouse to get drafted by the Bucs at No. 1. [read more]

This Tampa Bay Buccaneers regime has been wheeling and dealing.

Trades are rather rare in the NFL, but the Bucs dumped five players — in five separate trades — in 2014. [read more]

People are questioning the credibility of Lovie Smith, but how could that be?

On BSPN television yesterday, NFL insider John Clayton, “The Professor,” called Lovie “the most principled coach in football.” [read more]

Crab-legs-stealing, BB-gun-shooting, obscenity-hollering, Heisman-Trophy-winning, former national champion Jameis Winston, the pride of Florida State University, continues to look like a much better quarterback prospect than Mike Glennon and Josh McCown.

It’s Joe’s daily nugget on the Jameis Watch, celebrating the best quarterback to wear No. 5 ever in the state of Florida. [read more]

Sometime today, quarterback Jameis Winston will step up to this here podium at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Yes, Joe is back at it, braving the minus-four degrees morning of frozen Indianapolis and at Lucas Oil Stadium for the third of the four-day affair open to media.

Thankfully, Indianapolis has cabs.

Today is all about Jameis Winston. He was delayed yesterday during his medicals and couldn’t make it to his planned media session as the place shuts down each day at 5 p.m.

Just like yesterday, there is no timetable, no set schedule on when Winston will appear. We may get 30-seconds warning, we may get five-minutes warning. Winston could walk to the podium in seven minutes or seven hours.

Either way, Joe is here to document his every word.

The 15-minute official interview the Bucs will give some draft prospects at the NFL Scouting Combine this week can be somewhat silly.

It’s valuable, but 15 minutes is brief for a guy professionally coached how to respond. [read more]

The Super Bowl champion New England Schianos always seem to land a stud offensive lineman late in the first round of the NFL Draft.

Perhaps that’s a big reason they always pick late in the first round? [read more]

It’s widely known that Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota comes from a college spread offense that doesn’t look much like what is seen in the NFC South on any given Sunday. (Neither does the Bucs’ offense, but that’s not the point here.) [read more]

When Marcus Mariota stepped up to Podium-C at the NFL Combine media center to have his much anticipated press conference this afternoon, the very first question (which came from Woody Cummings of the Tampa Tribune) asked how he would react if the Bucs drafted Jameis Winston.

Mariota seemed to shrug his shoulders, as if to say, “Your bad.” [read more]

Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston was scheduled to speak today before the NFL media of the world in frozen Indianapolis at Lucas Oil Stadium. Instead, he got delayed. [read more]

Marcus Mariota was grilled this afternoon

Marcus Mariota made his debut in front of Joe and hundreds of NFL media today at Lucas Oil Stadium in frozen Indianapolis. He seemed to enjoy some of it – and tired quickly over another element of it. [read more]

Man, BSPN had a field day this afternoon with the freshly measured hand sizes of quarterback prospects Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota. [read more]

It seems former Bucs great and Pro Football Hall of Famer Warren Sapp washed away a lucrative television career over a low three-figure (each) escapade with two Phoenix, um, escorts. [read more]

Jameis Winston is not JaMarcus Russell. The comparison is just ignorant.

This is a big day for Bucs Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston. He will be baptized into the hungry, cynical world of NFL media, which Joe guesses has many members hellbent on putting Winston on trial for an offense for which he was not charged, but “exonerated” of, as Bucs coach Lovie Smith said yesterday. [read more]

In many ways, Tampa Bay’s 2014 season was more bizarre than the MRSA-infected, quarterback-gone-mental, Fire-Schiano-billboards campaign of 2013.

There were plenty of real Bucs mysteries last year, and Joe’s revisiting the most interesting of the bunch. [read more]

Lovie Smith stands firm

Tampa Bay was a free-wheeling, big player in free agency last year. They even made several trades, which is uncommon in the NFL.

So what’s going to happen when the free agency dinner bell rings in 19 short days? [read more]

John Harbaugh speaks out on his prized center

Yes, one reason the Bucs were the garbage truck of the NFL last year is they tore apart what the new regime thought was an under-performing offensive line.

No issue in that.

Problem was, in dismantling the offensive line, they made the line worse and matador-like. [read more]

Crab-legs-stealing, BB-gun-shooting, obscenity-hollering, Heisman-Trophy-winning, former national champion Jameis Winston, the pride of Florida State University, continues to look like a much better quarterback prospect than Mike Glennon and Josh McCown.

It’s Joe’s daily nugget on the Jameis Watch, celebrating the best quarterback to wear No. 5 ever in the state of Florida. [read more]

Good morning from frozen Indianapolis, where at 9:16 a.m. it is minus-2 degrees (Fahrenheit) with a wind chill of minus-26.

Folks are beginning to thaw out and stir at Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the 2015 NFL Scouting Combine. There is a buzz as sportswriters are feeling the caffeine, and feeling what today is. It is Jameis Day.

Later, no telling when, Jameis Winston will take the podium for his first press conference as a professional athlete. Yes, Marcus Mariota will do the same.

Joe has tons of stories already, and more to come throughout the day. So keep hitting that F5 button and tell your boss the Bucs are the highest priority.