For those out of the loop, famous Sports Illustrated NFL writer Peter King, who also is an analyst on NBC-TV football broadcasts, NFL Radio and more, writes a gigantic column Monday Morning Quarterback column for SI.com. It’s several thousands of words on everything King thinks fans need to know out of the previous day’s NFL games — and a little bit more.

It’s a great column, and clearly King stays up all night writing it before it posts on Monday morning.

But something shockingly was missing from King’s column today. There was not one mention of Tanard Jackson.

Jackson was home last Monday finishing out more than a year suspended by the NFL for substance abuse. Then he gets reinstated, attends a few practices and flourishes in the starting lineup Sunday against arguably the best offense in the NFL.

There’s no question that Jackson’s story was one of the more stunning in NFL this season, complete with  Hollywood storylines of getting an early interception and having to leave the game for a spell with cramps, yet not a peep from King in his all-encompassing column.

Joe respects and likes King, but this was either a major screwup or just evidence that the Bucs are nothing more than an annoying afterthought for the national media.

Either option sucks.

SI.com NFL guru Mark Perloff explains that he’s no believer in team Tampa Bay. His comrade in this video is somewhat warm on the Bucs but more down on the Saints.

Leading 20-7 yesterday with about 1:30 left in the first half and the ball on their 45 yard line, the Bucs threw three consecutive incompletions to Kellen Winslow rather than trying to pound the ball on the ground.

The latter likely would have kept New Orleans from getting the ball back with enough time to score before intermission. But the Bucs chose the riskier path — what were they thinking? — and with 55 seconds left, punter Michael Koenen dropped a gorgeous punt out of bounds at the New Orleans 2 yard line.

Drew Brees then proceeded to march the Saints 84 yards, which set up an end-of-half field goal for the bad guys. The Bucs probably allow a touchdown there if not for Koenen’s stud punt, something he rips off routinely — and something Raheem Morris appreciates immensely.

“[Koenan] absolutely did a great job keeping the ball away from [Darren] Sproles. He’s been an MVP the whole season. He’s gotten game balls. I don’t know if I can give him enough for what he does for us,” Raheem said after the win. “Changing field position, that one big bomb [late in the first half] he got out of there for us. All those things, you know, it’s definitely been a winning edge for us this year.”

Koenen’s surely been worth the many millions the Bucs paid him in free agency. Imagine if the Bucs could pick another couple of standout free agents like that for next season.

Jeff Duncan gives his take on the Bucs win Sunday in this New Orleans Times-Picayune video.

Joe was as geeked as the next guy that the Bucs won. Look, the great thing about sports is the unexpected. And Joe will challenge anyone who, with a sober mind, fully expected the Bucs would have won yesterday after the chain-whipping they endured in San Francisco and playing without their best running back and best defensive lineman and their starting center leaving the game with an injured arm.

It very well could be a coming of age moment for the Bucs and a turning point in the season.

But Pat Yasinskas is of the mind this may be a turning point for the organization, that perhaps the Bucs will be the team to beat in the NFC South and not the Saints.

What the Bucs found back home in Tampa Bay (before shipping off to London on Monday morning to play the Chicago Bears next Sunday) was a bigger win than they’ve had in several years. In a 10-6 season last year, the Bucs won a lot of games against mediocre teams. Even the biggest victory earlier this season, against Atlanta, wasn’t all that impressive because the Falcons have been up and down.

But Sunday was different. There’s no debating whether the Saints are a good team. There’s no arguing the Bucs played their most complete game since Morris has been around. Graham took care of the ground game, Freeman had his best game of the season and the defense was the story of the day.

“When our defense plays like that, there’s no one in the NFL that can beat us,’’ Penn said. “No one.’’

Joe never thought of the win that way but Yasinskas has a point. If the Bucs become the team to beat in the division, it very much is a turning point for the franchise, not just a season.

Jim Basquil and Eric Allen dissect the Bucs win over the Saints yesterday in this BSPN video.

When Preston Parker caught a 19-yard second-quarter touchdown pass to give the Bucs a 19-7 lead, Kellen Winslow didn’t look happy.

On that play, the Saints were late to the line of scrimmage in having a guy cover Winslow, who was lined up in the flat. Winslow was flailing and screaming for a quick snap of the ball because he was alone, but it didn’t come. The Saints did, in fact, finally get a man over before the snap to cover Winslow, who was signaling Josh Freeman to throw him the ball, seemingly because Winslow liked the 1-0n-1 matchup against the smaller defender.

At the snap, Winslow broke for the corner of the end zone. He wasn’t open. And Freeman hit Parker over the middle, just inside of Winslow for the score. Parker’s touchdown celebration was near Winslow in the end zone, but Winslow didn’t join in. Winslow had a slumped posture and was the last player off the field.

His first stop was Josh Freeman to talk about something that didn’t look too celebratory.

At the time, Joe was stunned that a guy would get in his quarterback’s ear, clearly with some negativity, seconds after a pivotal touchdown.

On the next Bucs’ offensive series, the Bucs, after running the ball successfully, threw three consecutive forced passes into Winslow. All were incomplete. Then Winslow and Freeman had what looked like another intense conversation picked up by FOX-TV cameras, which seemed to follow their sideline discussion intermittently.

Now Joe doesn’t know what was said, of course, but the way it all played out looked really crappy for Winslow.

After the game, Winslow told Joe, “We had some arguments out there. It was real heated out there. But I’m kind of glad it happened because it really brought us together.”

Following a win like this, Joe’s choosing to believe in all aspects of the fairy tale ending to yeterday’s story against the Saints, even in the case of the Winslow-Freeman squabble. But given some of the negative perceptions that came with Winslow from Cleveland, his relationship with Freeman bears keeping an eye on.

It was the strangest sight Joe had ever seen. An offensive coordinator, a head coach, sitting on a bench calling plays. When Saints coach Sean Payton got rolled up and blew out a knee and suffered a broken leg Sunday, Joe can only imagine that may have affected in some way the Saints offense.

But Payton wasn’t the only coach who blew a knee.

Bucs secondary coach Jimmy Lake blew out a knee as well as reported by
Victoria Horchak of PewterReport.com.

Lake injured his patella tendon during his celebration of an interception by Tanard Jackson in the second quarter. The injury will require surgery which he will undergo once the team returns from London. When asked about his injury he kind of brushed it off.

“I am feeling fine,” Lake said. “I am feeling fine. It is just stiffer than anything. I got the Cadillac Williams injury. It is the patella tendon. I will have surgery right when I get back from London.”

With Lake not being able to be on the sidelines for the remainder of the game, the team turned to veteran player Ronde Barber to assist in the relaying of information to the defense on the field. Barber was seen on the field wearing a headset after the injury to Lake. According to Barber, he was not play-calling, but rather just relaying the calls of what coach said in his ear to his teammates.

Joe too saw Ronde Barber wearing a headset at one point and thought not much more of it. Joe wonders if the NFL has some rule about players wearing a headset? The league sure gets bent over smartphones on the sideline.

Joe always sees players wearing earphones but never headsets.

Joe pointed out that the Bucs were last in the NFC in interceptions yesterday, with only two through the first five games.

That lousy stat is out the window now, after Tanard Jackson, E.J. Biggers and Quincy Black picked off Drew Brees today.

As a result, the Bucs’ former defensive backs coach and the man who says “Stats are for losers” several times a week changed his tune tonight during his postgame news conference. A smiling Raheem Morris said, ” Stats are for losers except interceptions.”

Bucs defensive backs were dropping balls left and right before today. Often times that’s contagious.

It’s amazing that the guy on his couch (or not on his couch) for the past year was the one with glue on his hands to make the Bucs’ secondary dangerous again.

There were many fingers pointed at Bucs receiver Mike Williams over the past few weeks for the struggles of the Bucs offense. And no one pointed a bigger finger than Williams himself who described his play this season thus far as “terrible.”

But the Bucs offense woke up from a slumber today, and a big reason was the play of Williams. The second-year receiver had six catches for 59 yards and helped open up the offense.

Williams was quite excited about the win after the game.

“This feels great,” Williams said with an ear-to-ear smile. “It feels great to beat a division opponent and to be in first place and for the team we beat to be the Saints on top of that. It feels great.

“The Saints are a great team. It’s always hard to get a division win but to do it against he Saints, man, it feels great.”

Though the game was blacked out, there were nearly 57,000 in the stadium and at times it sounded as if it were 100,000. This was not lost on Williams who was impressed and motivated by the fans.

“Beating the Saints at home, I hope that gets some more people in the [stands],” Williams said. “To get a home win like that, and a big game like the Saints, the people that were here were our sixth man, our 12th man, whatever you want to call it. They were there for us and it feels good.”

One of Joe’s favorite stories about the greatest basketball team ever assembled, the 1984 U.S. Olympic men’s squad, was when coach Bob Knight took the team on a barnstorming tour just prior to the Olympics.

Knight used these stops as both a scrimmage and a grueling practice, knowing that his backups were likely better than any other team in the world.

In a particular practice at an Indiana high school gym that seats over 10,000, Knight abruptly halted a practice after Oklahoma forward Wayman Tisdale had a defensive stop.

Knight had ridden Tisdale mercilessly throughout the practices for his lack of defensive hustle. In Knight’s eyes, if one couldn’t play defense, one couldn’t play basketball.

Knight stopped practice and demanded someone bring him a magic marker. Knight walked to where Tisdale was standing on the court, knelt down and wrote on the basketball floor with the magic marker “Wayman Tisdale played defense” and wrote the day’s date below.

That story raced through Joe’s mind when linebacker Quincy Black picked off a Drew Brees pass late in the game in the end zone. It was a play that turned the game and all but sealed the win.

Joe just wanted to run on the field and spray paint “Quincy Black made a play.”

Joe has been harsh on Black over the past few years. While people screamed bloody murder over Barrett Ruud not making plays, Joe wondered why the same standards were never applied to Black? Joe can think of four splash plays now that Black has made in not quite three seasons.

“It was man-to-man defense and Drew Brees doesn’t make those mistakes that often,” Black said of his interception, which was a drag route and Black was assigned to John Gilmore. “I was at the right place at the right time.”

Black didn’t seem to want to talk about the Bucs stirring win over the Saints. He surely didn’t want to talk about the alley-beating the 49ers laid upon them last week when Joe asked how the Bucs made such a dramatic bounce-back in a week.

“That doesn’t matter,” Black said.”We won the game today and we have a game in London next week that we have to prepare for that.”

The defense rose to the occasion today forcing four turnovers and Black, for a change, was a big part of that at a critical time no less.

“To create turnovers at home, the crowd was going and it was an exciting atmosphere,” Black said. “Glad to get out with a ‘W.'”

Joe only hopes Black’s play today is a harbinger of things to come.

First, the really good news. Earnest Graham told Joe he feels 100 percent coming out of the Saints game. No bruises. No tweaks. No cobwebs in his head.

And considering Graham ran for 109 yards on just 17 carries and Joe can’t find anyone that thinks LeGarrette Blount will play Sunday in England, that was critical, especially considering Graham’s history of injuries.

Watching Graham rekindle his 2007 glory today, Joe wondered briefly whether Graham could be more versatile and dangerous than Blount?

Don’t get Joe wrong, Joe thinks Blount is a stud, but Graham was stellar, running hard and flashing elusiveness Blount doesn’t have.  Joe asked Donald Penn about Graham, and Penn suggested Graham might be the better back.

“We knew Earnest Graham was going to bring it to the table. You remember that year when he came in and took over for Cadillac and almost had 1,000 yard rushing? We knew Earnest Graham would come through. Earnest Graham knew Earnest Graham he would come through,” Penn said.

“You know, he’s a veteran. Blount’s still learning and he’s got a great guy to learn from, but you know Earnest Graham has been there a lot. He knows how to read those holes a little better. You know, Blount’s still learning. You know, Blount’s probably going to sit down with E.G. and watch this film and be like, ‘Damn, OK. Let me see what [Graham’s] seeing.’ And it’s going to help him out. We’re going to be a lot better.”

Joe’s just grateful right now that the Bucs can afford to have Blount miss the Bears game Sunday (then rest/rehab during the bye week) and really get his knee healthy. The Bears have one of the worst run defenses in the NFL, which doesn’t hurt.

As for Graham, he says he’s down to 225 pounds, from 235 as a fullback in 2010, and looking to get down to his 2007 playing weight of 220 soon. He said he’s feeling some extra quickness. And Joe’s pretty sure everyone saw it.

Just an injury update here on center/captain Jeff Faine, who left the game with a bicep injury midway through today’s beating of the Saints.

After the game, Faine said there’s a slim chance he would return next Sunday in England but the likely scenario would have him back on the field in New Orleans on Nov. 6 to face the Saints.

Faine wasn’t too downtrodden and spoke warmly of the Bucs’ resiliency.

Joe has been a big Jeremy Zuttah fan from Day 1. As a rookie, he started four games to replace an injured Davin Joseph.

Zuttah’s name was never mentioned by Gene Deckerhoff. And for an offensive lineman, there can be no greater praise.

When Bucs center Jeff Faine went down with a right bicep injury today, Zuttah, who was starting at left guard, made the transition smoothly back to center.

Last year when Faine went down with an injury, Zuttah again stepped in and one could argue the offensive line may have been better. It certainly wasn’t worse.

Zuttah just shrugged off the move in mid-game. Just another day at the office, Zuttah suggested.

“It is what it is,” Zuttah said. “I played way more at center this year in practice than any other position. So it didn’t bother me.”

As for having to flip positions in the middle of a game, Zuttah said, “You have to do what you have to do sometimes, yeah.”

Zuttah didn’t want to talk about himself so much, but rather the win. After getting mugged on the streets of San Francisco last week known better as the Massacre at Candlestick, it was a fantastic bounce-back. To do that against the Saints and in the process, reach a tie for first place was something Zuttah and the rest of his teammates were celebrating.

“It’s nice to get a win over such a good team,” Zuttah said. “This is the Saints and Drew Brees.”

Zuttah gave a lot of credit to the Bucs defense. It was the Bucs defense that forced four turnovers and allowed the offense to not panic. The Bucs’ offense didn’t need to score a touchdown each possession.

“The defense did a great job,” Zuttah said. “We still have to do a better job of scoring points when we get down there. We need to turn some of those three points into seven points. The defense helped us out. We have to help them out too.”

The comeback of Tanard Jackson still amazes Joe. What an unreal physical and mental challenge. Joe had a man-to-blogger conversation with Aqib Talib after the Bucs-Saints game to get his take on Jackson’s return.

JoeBucsFan.com: Tanard Jackson’s on the couch and working out himself for a year and comes back and plays well against one of the best offenses in the league and even gets a pick. What does that say to you?

Aqib Talib: Man, he was out, but I assure you he wasn’t on the couch though. He wasn’t just at home on the couch, you know what I’m saying. He held up pretty good. He cramped a little bit at the end. While he was out he worked. He worked hard. And I know because half the offseason I was working with him. So he wasn’t home on the couch.

Joe: Fans might be wondering what’s the value of training camp and preseason when a guy can come back like that and perform at a high level? Does that mean training camp isn’t as valuable as everyone thinks it is?

Talib: No. Everbody their own person. I’m sure he would have been in even better shape if he was in camp. So training camp is important. But everyone is their own person. You know I don’t speak for everybody.

Joe: When you guys were working out through the lockout, what were you doing?

Talib: Just playing football, lifting weights, playing football. That’s what we did. Football drills.

Joe: What sort of difference does Tanard bring back there? No slight on Corey Lynch, but what’s different with Tanard in there?

Talib: They different people. They bring a different mentality to the game. Tanard’s going to come down and he’s going to hit you. He showed that tonight. He’ll come down and hit you. He looked like he never left. He knows all the calls, knows all the run fits. He’s a starter.

Roughly an hour after the Bucs beat the Saints and Joe is still shaking his head, but not in a bad way.

This is why Joe doesn’t like to gamble on the NFL. What sober person saw this coming?

A defense that was beaten like an unwanted stepchild last week by the 49ers, without one of its best players (Gerald McCoy) and so desperate for a safety it started a guy who had a grand total of four practices in the past 54 weeks, and facing Drew Brees no less, forced four turnovers.

A team that was without its best running back, relying on a 31-year old tailback, a senior citizen by NFL standards, ran for over 100 yards.

A team that has been pistol-whipped by the Saints at home the past two seasons turned the tables and did the same to the Saints.

The Bucs are now in first place, tied with the Saints for the NFC South lead and currently holding the tiebreaker edge and undefeated in the division through five games.

A stunning turn of events along Dale Mabry Highway.

What a game!

Damn, Joe is wiped out. Joe nearly had a stroke at the Bucs’ reluctance to run the ball to kill the clock late in the fourth quarter, and kill the clock at the end of the first half. And the Bucs only once handed the ball off on consecutive plays before the close-out drive by Joe’s count.

But it didn’t matter. Josh Freeman turned in a beast of a game in a “signature” matchup against Drew Brees. Freeman won the battle, even though it wasn’t his greatest performance.

A 109-yard game by Earnest Graham! An interception by Tanard Jackson, couchbound just a week ago!. The Bucs stopped the run! The Bucs’ secondary caught the balls that hit their hands.

Crack open the ice cold adult beverages. The Bucs lead the NFC South with a 4-2 record and the tiebreaker edge on the Saints.

Stick with Joe through the night for all kinds of takes and reaction from the Bucs locker room.

OK boys and girls, have at it. Let your feelings be known about how the Bucs are playing against the Saints today. As always, any and all commenters who post addresses of pirated streams of the game, even spelling the addresses out, will be banned. You are welcome to post your e-mail address and share the pirated feeds amongst yourselves.

Now behave! 🙂

Q.: But Joe, why don’t you have live chats?

A.: They were more pain in the ass than worth it for Joe. The software for the live chats only allowed 15 unmoderated users. Any more than 15, each and every comment had to be approved. Joe’s trying to do work (read: watch the game) and too may people were b!tching about how their comments were not posted quick enough, so Joe decided to deep-six the live chats for Bucs games.

Here are the inactive players for the Saints-Bucs game today.

Bucs inactives: Wide receiver Sammie Stroughter, running back LaGarrette Blount, tight end Luke Stocker, defensive tackle Gerald McCoy, GMC, offensive tackles James Lee and Derek Hardman, and linebacker Zac Diles.

Saints inactives: cornerback Johnny Patrick, linebacker Will Herring, tackle Zach Strief, center Matt Tennant, tight end David Thomas, wide receiver Adrian Arrington and defensive end Jeff Charleston.

Week 6
Saints at Bucs
Kickoff: 4:15 p.m.
TV: Blacked out locally. Viewers outside the Tampa/Orlando TV markets can enjoy the game on DirecTV 714. The game will be available at midnight on NFL.com’s Game Rewind feature for free (locally) for a 72-hour window and will be available at midnight on NFL Sunday Ticket’s Short Cuts feature.
Radio: Buccaneers Radio Network (in Tampa WFUS-FM, 103.5 and WDAE-AM, 620); Sirius Channel 136.
Weather: Per Accuweather.com, simply dynamite weather. Kickoff is expected to be 85 degrees under partly cloudy skies. There will be a bit of a breeze with winds expected to be at 12 mph. Those winds will gradually decrease along with the temperature, expected to be 79 at game’s end.
Odds: Per SportsBook.com, Bucs +6.5.
Outlook: Joe has a very bad vibe about this game. We all have the memory of the Bucs’ seal-clubbing at the hands of the 49ers fresh in our heads. Now the Bucs will try to bounce back after being beaten up. It’s hard enough trying to pull that off against the Vikings, for example. It’s a far different thing to try to bounce back short-handed against Drew Brees and the Saints. With LeGarrette Blount out Joe is not expecting any short of ground game from the Bucs. With Gerald McCoy out, Joe expects a ground game from the Saints. For the Bucs to win, Joe believes it will be in the hands of Josh Freeman. He will have to win a battle of the air with Drew Brees. He’s done it before, the final game of last season. If Freeman is off and the Bucs receivers can’t get open, this very well could turn as ugly as the first time the Bucs played the Saints last year when the game was over by halftime.

James Varney, Mike Triplett and Jeff Duncan discuss the status of the Saints and look at today’s game with the Bucs in this New Orleans Times-Picayune video.