Back on the WDAE-AM 620 airwaves after a Christmas vacation, former Bucs guard Ian Beckles came out swinging today with a barrage of uppercuts for Bucs players, coaches, and management.

One jab particularly interesting to Joe was directed toward LeGarrette Blount, who Beckles thinks is a second-rate football player.

“Let’s stop saying that LeGarrette Blount is good,” Beckles said. “You can’t be a one-dimensional running back that fumbles.”

Beckles also defended his statement saying Bount’s off the field on third down, can’t block and isn’t good in short yardage.

There’s no denying Beckles is on the money with the fumbling take. That’s never acceptable, and Blount couldn’t blame a wet ball Saturday in Carolina. At least that’s correctable.

However, Joe disagrees with Beckles overall because Joe believes Greg Olson simply hasn’t figured out how to use Blount. He’s shown he can catch the ball and do damage in space, yet they don’t dial that those calls very much. Blount’s got more yards per catch than Kellen Winslow.

And Joe surely doesn’t believe the Bucs offense would get worse with Blount playing more on third down. His mere presence should soften the defense. Every time Blount jogs off the field Joe swears he can hear the happy sighs of defensive players.

Blount’s legitimately a dangerous weapon that the Bucs didn’t use or develop nearly as much as they should have this season.

In his “10 Things You Need to Know” about the NFL after Week 16, Mike Florio, the creator, curator and overall guru of ProFootballTalk.com explains on NBC SportsTalk “The Status of Raheem Morris.” The subject is No. 9.

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"Hey Dominik, me and Sam Bradford and Caddy are gonna eat you for lunch next year"

As Joe briefly touched on in the Morning Cup of Joe today, and what is now buzzing around NFL circles, Chucky wants back in coaching for 2012 and St. Louis or San Diego could be high on his Christmas list.

Joe hopes Chucky gets either job. Why? Because the Bucs will play both the Rams and the Chargers next season.

Would a Chucky return muster a home sellout and/or stimulate a national TV appearance?

If nothing else, the Buc facing Chucky in 2012 would pump a little extra excitement into next year, especially if Raheem Morris is Chucky’s new defensive backs coach and Greg Olson is coaching his QB.

If there’s one reason — and there’s more — why the Bucs absolutely have to be active in free agency when the cash bell rings in March, it’s because of the shoddy play of the Bucs linebackers.

Collectively, the current crop of linebackers misses tackles, doesn’t shed blocks, lands in the wrong gaps, and isn’t physical. Amazingly, they combined for just 10 tackles in 49 offensive snaps for Carolina on Saturday. That’s a dubious feat, consdering Cam Newton only threw four incompletions and the Panthers ran the ball 30+ times.

Simply stated, Geno Hayes and Quincy Black have had dreadful seasons. Neither deserve to be more than the answers to Bucs trivia questions in 2012. Each has had three full seasons to prove himself since grabbing top-dog status on the linebacker depth chart from Angelo Crowell and Jermaine Phillips (yes, those names were painful for Joe to type) early in the 2009 campaign.

Obviously, the Bucs had high hopes for Black after paying him a king’s ransom this offseason. He turns 28 in February entering his sixth season. What question hasn’t been answered about him? Surely, he’s put enough on tape to get a pink slip. And Raheem Morris himself said he expected “absolute dominance” from Hayes. Neither delivered.

In Carolina, Mason Foster sure didn’t look like the guy Raheem was gushing over last week, but as a 22-year-old late third-round pick, Foster pretty much had the season expected of him, especially considering the corps around him.

If the Bucs decide to draft a linebacker with a premium pick in 2012, surely they’ll need and want a stud free agent LB to work alongside the rookie and Foster. If they don’t use a top pick on an LB, then they’ll surely need a veteran beast at linebacker to change the culture of the unit and the defense.

Dakoda Watson has shown a lot of good things, but the Bucs can’t keep plugging in seventh rounders as starters and hoping for elite play.

Joe expects to be very busy writing about the excitement of massive coaching changes in the coming weeks, but right now Joe finds it therapeutic to think about filling the Bucs’ many holes, the biggest of which are in the center of the defense.

If people think Joe takes some morbid pleasure over the way the Bucs have sunk from a promising season into a complete and total tailspin, well, that perception cannot be further from the truth.

When a Bucs embattled coach may just be days away from being jettisoned, it’s sad for Joe because that means the team is doing terribly.

Not only is Morris a virtual pinata for fans in recent weeks, he’s starting to catch heat from national media types, like Sports Illustrated’s Peter King via Twitter.

@FootballPost: Morris doesn’t believe he should be fired. Says everyone bought youth plan

@SI_PeterKing: It’d be wise to start coaching said youth.

The blast from King also seemed to perhaps offer a ray of sunshine for Morris, if you read between the characters, that if Morris coaches up his young squad for an upset over the Dixie Chicks Sunday, there is a glimmer of hope for Morris’ return.

Or, has the dye already been cast?

Appearing on the segment “Word on the Street” on the man’s channel, NFL Network, a piece was devoted to the job status of embattled Bucs coach Raheem Morris.

NFL Network host Paul Burmeister suggested to Rick Stroud of the St. Petersburg Times that Morris’ tenure as the Bucs coach is “a little bit in doubt” and Stroud corrected Burmeister suggesting Morris is “most likely” gone no matter if the Bucs beat the Dixie Chicks next week or not.

Stroud suggested that youth isn’t the lone factor in the losing, but lack of depth. The entire segment can be viewed here.

Bucs general manager Mark Dominik greets former Air Force Staff Sgt. Andreas Bernt, who received a gift from the Bucs to help refurbish his home so it can become wheelchair accessible. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Enough for the time being of the dire predictions for embattled Bucs coach Raheem Morris, the collapse of the defense or LeGarrette Blount being benched.

No, it’s still Christmastime. And that means helping the community and a couple of cool items Joe has been negligent about posting need to be acknowledged.

Last week. an Air Force veteran, who has been felled by a variety of illnesses from his service, needed his house refurbished because he is relegated to a wheelchair and the Bucs pitched in some $40,000 to help pay the costs, cites TBO.com.

The kitchen counters are too high. The doors in the house are too narrow. The bathroom isn’t accommodating for a person in a wheelchair.

Those problems and more, though, will soon be remedied, thanks to a $40,000 donation from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the work of Rebuilding Together Tampa Bay.

The organizations are teaming together to remodel the Tampa home of retired U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andreas Bernt. Bernt has been dealing with a variety of serious medical problems, including lymphoma and transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder that has left him using a wheelchair.

Also, Metropolitian Ministries, which does much for the less-priviledged in the area, was running short of supplies to give children and put out a request to the community to render additional aid if they could.

Attacking the task like a hobbled quarterback, many Bucs defensive linemen came to the rescue, baring loads of toys and bikes for youngsters, so wrote multimedia master Scott Smith of Buccaneers.com.

Help arrived on Thursday afternoon in the form of five large men carrying armfuls of toys, bicycles, board games and electronics to Metropolitan Ministries’ annual toy drive. With their combined weight tipping the scale at nearly one ton, Buccaneers’ defensive linemen Lamar Divens, Jovan Haye, Albert Haynesworth, Roy Miller and Frank Okam proved that they are big men with even bigger hearts as the crew perused the aisles of a local Wal-mart to collect toys for needy children.

“I just knew that when we all got together as a D-line that we could do something great,” Miller said. “I got the idea that we should put the money together, and it turned out to be a great thing. Who would have known that a couple hundred dollars could have done this and made some kids’ Christmas that special?”

Pooled together, the defensive linemen’s contributions was more like thousands of dollars in Christmas presents. The players filled several shopping carts to the brim with holiday toys and gifts and then delivered them to the nearby Ministries location. The players were overjoyed to participate in the holiday contribution spearheaded by Miller, even though they had just finished a 90-minute practice at One Buccaneer Place before their shopping spree.

Also last week, the team held its annual “Day of Giving,” where some 30 needy families were chosen by the United Way of families. The families then arrived at One Buc Palace for something other than a tour, so Smith writes.

The families were then split up into three groups and led out behind One Buccaneer Place. The assembly moved along the back of the facility towards the Buccaneers’ enormous weight room. Between the main building and the weight room is a breezeway, and as the children on hand surged around the corner into the breezeway they were greeted with another wonderful surprise. Lining both sides of the passageway was a bicycle for each child, helpfully tagged by name. Smaller children not ready for bicycles were given Big Wheel-type tricycles.

It took some time for the kids’ excitement over their new bikes to die down, but the group then learned that the Day of Giving still wasn’t over. At that point, three large buses pulled into view, ready to take the whole crowd to a nearby Target store, where the families were going to be sent on a shopping spree.

As upset as we are about how this football season has totally collapsed and as angry as some might be over the direction of the team, one thing is clear to Joe: The Bucs care about the needy and give back to the community.

Well done gentlemen. Well done.

For weeks, Joe’s heard some callers to sports radio say that Raheem Morris should not be fired because a coach can’t logically go from being a legitimate Coach of the Year candidate one season to a coach worthy of firing the next.

And that argument was given more life today when Raheem himself floated a similar take during his Monday news conference.

Well, Joe knows plenty of coaches that were hailed as superstars one season and forced to walk the plank after the following campaign.

Obviously, Todd Haley is a recent example with the Chiefs. Pete Carroll was canned after his third year in New England, despite never having a losing season there. And Bill Belichick was in a situation similar to Raheem’s with the Browns back in the mid-1990s.

There have been others.

Belicheat was a young man in his fourth season as head coach when the Browns broke through with an 11-5 record in 1994. They shocked the NFL by allowing a league-best 12.8 points per game. And the Browns marched into the Wild Card playoffs and took out New England, led by 1994 AP Coach of the Year Bill Parcells.

Belicheat was fired after a 5-11 record in 1995.

It happens. Especially to younger first-time head coaches that typically get a lot less leeway than their more experienced colleagues.

Now the past few weeks Joe has heard a lot about players “quitting,” which is a damning accusation for a professional football player.

Joe is not one to point fingers and say “Player-X tanked it” because without foolproof evidence like that of Dallass defensive back Michael Jenkins, it’s hard to know what is in said player’s mind or heart.

But Ashley Fox of BSPN seems to be jumping on the bandwagon, saying the Bucs quit; adamantly so.

The Buccaneers did quit. It likely will cost coach Raheem Morris his job. If the players really liked playing for the 35-year-old Morris, they would not have laid down the way they did against Carolina. They allowed the Panthers to drive down the field on their opening possession, and it just got worse from there.

The Bucs trailed 20-10 at halftime but allowed Carolina to score 28 unanswered points out of the break. They allowed the Panthers to score on fourth-and-1 from the 11-yard line, gave up a 41-yard touchdown run to quarterback Cam Newton, lost a fumble on the ensuing kickoff and gave up another touchdown two plays later.

A team that wants its coach to retain his job doesn’t lose a division game 48-16.

Joe believes Fox’s last sentence the be the most accurate. You always hear Bucs players suggest they like playing for Morris and enjoy him. But it doesn’t appear they are playing with the fire to save their coach’s job.

That’s a big difference from quitting.

Pressed by the media today about his job security and asked whether he would retain himself for 2012, Raheem Morris made it clear that the Bucs’ woes are a team effort and the focus — good and bad — shouldn’t be all on him.

He also offered a bit of a defense for his record during the Monday afternoon news conference.

“You don’t go from being a coach of the year candidate to being the worst coach in the league to get fired within a year,” Raheem said.

Channeling the team concept, Raheem also referenced the “the collective agreement to go young” between the three-headed leadership team of himself, Mark Dominik and Team Glazer.

Raheem seems very confident he should return. Joe admires his confidence, but Joe thinks Raheem a little too caught up with past accomplishments.

Good and great head coaches get fired all the time. And Raheem has proven he’s not in either category yet.

Before training camp, Davin Joseph said lockout time for yoga and other alternative training unavailable at One Buc Palace would help him stay healthier this season. Apparently, it has.

Sure, JoeBucsFan.com is your sometimes-friendly, all-things-Bucs site, but occasionally Joe strays a little off path. And since this involves theFalcons, it’s not too far off track.

The New York Times ran a feature story yesterday on the Falcons’ fitness philosophy over the past handful of seasons, one that comines ancient stuff with modern concepts, filexibility, and revolutionary analysis mixed in. Joe recommends you read the whole piece.

The team’s fitness room evokes a workout gym in a bygone era. Players hoist kettlebells— cast-iron balls with handles — that date to ancient Greece. Other gear of a certain age includes medicine balls and jump rope.

“We’re pretty basic,” Cook said. With such accessories, he added, “you can get closer to the movements in competition.”

Until this year, tight end Tony Gonzalez skillfully charted his own fitness course, losing only two games to injuries in nearly 15 seasons.

In deference to his age, Gonzalez, 35, incorporated F.M.S. practices, with no regrets.

“I told Fish, ‘I wish I would have listened to you a little sooner,’ ” Gonzalez said.

The Falcons claim their way has led to fewer injuries, per the article, and about eight NFL teams have adopted some of their fundamentals.

That got Joe thinking about how Davin Joseph said the lockout helped him because he had more time to do yoga and other personal training not available at One Buc Palace, stuff he felt was better for his healing knee and foot.

Just something different to think about before this losing streak sends you to the Skyway.

The ESPN pitchforks are sharpened and its jabs are coming hard at Raheem Morris.

Pat Yasinskas, the Disney outfit’s NFC South blogger/beat writer, says keeping Raheem under any circumstances is “ludicrous,” so he penned after the Bucs’ beating at Carolina.

I know there’s a small minority out there who say Morris should keep his job, replace himself as defensive coordinator and make a switch at offensive coordinator. Yeah, that’s brilliant and no doubt would put the Bucs straight into the Super Bowl next season. Actually, it’s ludicrous. It’s like having a refrigerator that hasn’t worked in more than two months and saying, “No need to call a repairman or get a new one because this thing just might kick in at any moment.”

Joe often disagrees with Yasinskas, but not here, though Joe finds the refrigerator analogy a bit off the mark. For Joe, four straight blowouts, three straight home blowouts, nine straight losses, and widespread acceptance that the Bucs aren’t giving their all, is enough to end any coach’s reign.

The popular rule of thumb from those in the know locally is if the Bucs and embattled Bucs coach Raheem Morris closed the season on a 10-game losing streak, it would mark the end of the Raheem Morris Era with the Bucs.

Of course, that is not set in stone, but some believe Morris could save his bacon with a win over the Dixie Chicks next week.

Well, Morris got a boost last night when, with a Packers win, the Dixie Chicks secured a playoff berth. When the Bucs play at Atlanta next week, Joe would be shocked if Matty Ice, Julio Jones, Michael Turner and Tony Gonzalez play more than a quarter, if at all, as they would have a playoff game six or seven days later in the first round.

With many of the Falcons stars being rested, it just may open the door for the Bucs to rally and win, in turn saving Morris’ job, theoretically.

So should Morris be sending late-Christmas presents to Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers?

The comrades at BSPN are serving up highlights of the Panthers’ two biggest plays in the video below:

Watch the first play and tell Joe whether or not you see Quincy Black give up on the play too early. Also, feel free to comment on the second play when Quincy Black is in the hole but can’t get a finger on Cam Newton.

Today, Christmas, is supposed to be the day of peace and goodwill towards fellow man.

The way Bucs fans have developed a vile distaste for embattled coach Raheem Morris, Joe is guessing the previous sentence doesn’t apply to many locally when referencing Morris.

But NFL.com blogger Jenna Laine believes the curb-stomping the Bucs were delivered at the hands of the stinking Panthers has far-reaching social ramifications for the holidays.

@JennaLaineBucs: In a show of hands, please tell me how many Bucs fans, due to yesterday’s events, are too hung over to be around children today?

In a Twitter post last night, Laine — not an alcohol drinker in the sense that Joe is — confessed to slugging down two glasses of wine to help recover from the sight of that beatdown.

Joe will admit he had to throw down several pints last night to numb himself. As to Laine’s initial question, Joe finds it difficult to be around children sober much less hungover, so no, Joe is not hungover today.

Why are the Bucs tuning out their teachings?

That’s been a great mystery for the last nine weeks, and count Ronde Barber among those flummoxed (or “flummoxicated,” as the late Chris Thomas used to say.) Barber shared his disbelief with eye-RAH! Kaufman of The Tampa Tribune.

Veteran CB Ronde Barber can’t figure out why the Bucs can’t apply the principles they learn on the practice field to game day.

“That was an embarrassing performance, really, in the run game,” Barber said of allowing 270 yards rushing. “It’s frustrating to watch because you know what the problems are.

“It looks like guys want to do their own thing. You’ve got to believe the guy next to you is going to do his job.”

Joe wonders whether Barber will refuse to end his great career with the stain of this 2011 defense as his final chapter. One silver lining to this season could be Barber walking off the field too angry to go out on the bottom and deciding to return for 2012. It doesn’t say much, but he’s still one of the Bucs’ best defensive players.

In this damning analysis of Bucs coach Raheem Morris, Gregg Rosenthal tells the lovely Tiffany Simons that it’s clear that Bucs players don’t want Morris as their coach in this NBCSports.com video.

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Joe can only imagine the tense vibe that might permeate Bucs practices this week. The team is on a nine-game skid with four straight blowouts, has seemingly quit on its head coach, whose seat his broiling hot, and it’s the holiday season.

Not exactly a recipe for a healthy work environment.

Plus, Raheem Morris can’t even run a nasty, physical week of practice because of the new labor agreement rules.

Regardless, Raheem gave a glimpse into what’s coming at practice this week during his postgame news conference yesterday. Without yet watching the ugly game tape, Raheem knows his team can’t tackle. So he’ll focus more — again — on the fundamentals. (No, not the core beliefs, the other fundamentals.)

“We gotta tackle better. So I got to do more fundamental tackle drills, which we’ve been doing. We’ve gotta find a way to get Cam Newton on the ground and all these other backs,” Raheem said. “When you got people in the hole you expect to make those tackles, you like to make those tackles. We’re not. So I gotta do a better job coaching up how to tackle this week.”

Good luck with the Week 17 teaching sessions, coach.

Last week, Deion Sanders and Marshall Faulk publicly shamed the Bucs with claims that the team quit on national television.

Now it’s longtime Charlotte Observer columnist Tom Sorensen’s turn to call the Bucs quitters, as he did in a medley of postgame nuggets.

Tampa Bay quit.   

Not every player. But too many not to notice. Despite winning only two games, I did not think the Panthers quit on John Fox last season. They couldn’t score, true. Yet Fox retained respect until the end, especially from the defense.

Sadly, how can anyone argue against the Bucs effectively quitting on Raheem Morris and this season? Sure, there are Bucs going hard. Some, like Kregg Lumpkin, even played pretty well. But as a whole the team has mailed it in en route to four consecutive blowout losses.

Considering every sober fan is expecting a pasting by the Falcons next week — and a majority expected yesterday’s result — this is finally rock bottom for the Bucs.

Joe scoffs at the suggestion that the Bucs’ head coaching gig in 2012 and beyond is one that would not be attractive to any coaching candidate.

Actually, Joe thinks just the opposite.

First, the magic of the new labor agreement kicks in for the start of the 2013 season, meaning the Bucs will be forced to spend a large amount of cash annually on player salaries (not fugdy salary cap figures) beginning that year. The Bucs will have to spend money and a potential new coach would reap the benefits.

Second, if it all starts in the trenches, like any football man will tell you, then the Bucs look promising with a pile of legitimate young talent on the offensive and defensive line.

Third, Josh Freeman has all the tools, has won plenty of games under pressure, and any potential new coach could do a lot worse than Freeman as his quarterback. Joe’s quite certain it would be almost impossible to find a savvy football coach that would thumb his nose at Freeman.

Joe has more reasons why the Bucs job is a damn good one, but you get the idea.

Columnist Gary Shelton of the St. Pete Times, however, seems to be in the other camp. He penned a long column after the Bucs’ latest debacle that asserts Tampa Bay’s on-field play and talent level will hurt its ability to recruit a name coach.

Maybe it was at Jeff Fisher’s house, or maybe at Brian Billick’s. Maybe it was at Bill Cowher’s. Wherever, it is probable that the new coach of the Bucs slipped away for a few hours and — risking double vision, retina scarring and corneal ulcers — tried to measure the awfulness.

Most likely, this was his conclusion:

Um, exactly how many years was that contract offer?

It would be hard to blame a job candidate for looking away from Saturday’s game. After all, the size of the mushroom cloud is new to him. The rest of us are used to the sight. We have watched, week by week, as the Bucs have sunk deeper into the quicksand.

Feel free to click through above and read Shelton’s entire piece. But Joe’s not buying the premise Shelton’s selling.

However, one thing that’s sure to scare any potential Raheem Morris replacement is the balance of power in the NFC South. The Bucs’ rivals aren’t likely to weaken anytime soon.

Joe hopes you are celebrating today in whatever way you wish to celebrate it, even if celebrating with a domestic lager and day-old pizza while sitting in your boxers and watching a tape of the Bucs winning the Super Bowl.

The success of this site couldn’t have happened without loyal readers such as yourself. So enjoy the day in the way you want.

Well, on second thought, maybe it’s not healthy to want to celebrate with Rachel Watson. No, Rachel didn’t come down Joe’s chimney last night (if she did Joe sure as hell wouldn’t be writing this post).

We all have to have a grasp of reality, don’t we? Sigh.