Eight games into his triumphant return from his couch, wide receiver Tiquan Underwood has opened a few eyes with his play of late after a rough start. He’s now got 16 catches for a whopping 325 yards and three touchdowns.

Joe talked to the soon-to-be free agent yesterday about taking over for Mike Williams and surviving an ugly 2013 debut. No hair questions, though Joe does think the Buccaneers need to sell an Underwood bobblehead. [read more]

Gerald McCoy dove deeper into his opinion of the Bucs’ frequent use of defensive line stunts

All that dancing along the Bucs’ defensive line (aka line stunts) is a head-scratcher and really needs a nickname it’s become so comical.

“The Rutgers Shuffle?” “The Sack Sucker?” 

How about “The Te’O Tango?”

The Bucs do it too often with too little results. It’s the 2013 Benn’d Around. [read more]

It’s sort of neat to understand how, in part, a couple of Bucs players found their way onto the roster.

When Bucs commander Greg Schiano accepted the job as Bucs coach in January 2012, he knew a lot of guys who entering the NFL draft or soon to enter the draft because he had recruited many of them.

Leonard Johnson and Mike Glennon are two guys Schiano recruited hard to join him in Rutgers. While neither player did, they left a large enough impression upon Schiano, that Schiano came calling in the NFL. [read more]

Joe remembers during the offseason, once you got past the rancor of Bucs fans wrestling over the pros and cons of former Bucs franchise quarterback leaky Rip Van Freeman, that the second-most angst-ridden topic was the lack of a tight end.

Bucs rock star general manager Mark Dominik thought he found a steal when he purloined Tom Crabtree from the Packers, yet fans still howled for more. This, despite Bucs offensive coordinator Mike Sullivan’s offense not featuring tight ends. [read more]

Getting squeezed by the feds may not be so fun after all.

The two baffoons who decided to wire tap the phone of Bucs rock star general manager Mark Dominik, then thought they could get wise and make a couple of shekels off of their misdoings by selling a recording to the notorious Deadspin.com, quickly found out the error of their ways when the long arm of the federal government went after them.

Apparently scared out of puberty by the thought of prison time in Guantanamo or coughing up hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and being on every federal watch list in the free world, the bozos copped a deal, so reports the creator, curator and overall guru of ProFootballTalk.com, the great Mike Florio, by way of the Associated Press. [read more]

It’s Joe’s weekly hour with the dean of Tampa Bay sports radio, Steve Duemig of WDAE-AM 620. Oh, what fun! Joe dove into all kinds of topics, from Johnny Football to Mike Sullivan and more. Enjoy!

Johnthan Banks opens up

The New Schiano Order secondary has been opportunistic and much better than last season, but they’ve given up the booty too easily — too many times.

Sunday in Carolina delivered one of those remote-tossing moments. The Panthers’ opening touchdown was a 16-yard toss to Brandon Lafell, who had nobody near him in the end zone. [read more]

What’s better than twos? Second-helpings. Double-dippings. Double-stacked. Double-breasted suits. Joe will let you play around with other pairs that are wrapped in goodness.

The Bucs believe good things come in pairs, as well. In fact, Bucs defensive coaches preach this to the secondary. [read more]

Mike Sullivan and others responded today

Yes, the Bucs’ rushing attack, dominant for three weeks, went nearly impotent in the past two games against Detroit and Carolina.

There was a lot of talk today at One Buc Palace about what might have gone wrong. Coaching was in the spotlight. [read more]

As the Bucs prepare for the bungling Bills this coming Sunday, could the Bucs air it out? It’s something to keep in mind when revisiting the words of Bucs commander Greg Schiano on Monday.

Schiano seemed to regret not pulling out a bag of tricks, so to speak, that he had in his hip pocket. They were plays his team had practiced but never used, per Schiano, because he didn’t give the plays a green light. [read more]

You can look at the performance of Bucs offensive coordinator Mike Sullivan from a few angles.

Sullivan’s offense is dreadful beyond any possible excuse in the second half of games this season, but the man did revive Josh Freeman from the depths of 2011 into a guy that set franchise records and was the gunslinger of the NFL’s ninth-ranked offense last year. [read more]

Fullback was a bright spot Sunday, Greg Schiano explained.

A couple of the Bucs’ soon-to-be unrestricted free agents, Dekoda Watson and Erik Lorig, have proved their worth this season.

You don’t expect to read big headlines about seventh-round draft picks, rockstar general manager Mark Dominik grabbed both there in 2010, but these young guys should be among the offseason priorities. [read more]

Buffalo is a different animal

Much has been made of the Bucs’ inability to run the ball effectively in recent games. Well, a lot of it has to do with who the Bucs were playing.

In the Detroit Lions and the Stinking Panthers, the Bucs were going up against two of the top rush defenses in the NFL. Carolina and Detroit are second and third, respectively, [read more]

Bucs punt return specialist Eric Page is on the cusp of a franchise record.

Despite place kicker Rian Lindell continuing to gag his field goal attempts, the Bucs’ special teams unit has seen a rebirth, Joe believes largely to do the tutelage of special teams coach Dave Wannstedt.

And while Bucs fans are just now starting to become familiar with Eric Page, a return specialist who is still learning his craft, his strong play also explains just how long Bucs fans have had to suffer with mediocre play from the team’s punt return squad. [read more]

OK, Joe is posting this in the middle of the night because he just ran across this and spent the past 10 minutes laughing.

As most Bucs fans know, current Eagles coach and then-Oregon coach Chip Kelly agreed to be the Bucs coach and hours later, reneged, stayed at Oregon one more year before taking the helm of the Eagles. [read more]

Greg Schiano went toe-to-toe on live radio. Everything from Josh Freeman to habitual failures were on the table.

Wow! Greg Schiano jumped into an old school radio grilling by Steve Duemig this evening on WDAE-AM 620. It was a powerful landmark interview that Joe will dissect later tonight and tomorrow.

Kudos to the head coach for fielding questions from his most vocal critic. Enjoy the entire audio below. The intensity and tension was flowing. The heat was on. It closed with Schiano saying the following:

“I know the tone of our interview today. There’s a lot of questions. I love the passion that you have. You’re the senior statesman of the Tampa sports world, and I appreciate your opinion. And I hope, you know, in this instance that we can turn it around and that you’ll say, ‘You know what, you were right Schiano.’ That’s what I’m looking forward to.”

“Well you better hurry up,” Duemig said laughing, followed by the two exchanging friendly-competitor farewells. It’s a must-listen.

Yes, before Warren Sapp and Derrick Brooks and John Lynch blossomed in the late 1990s, the Bucs were so horrid they were commonly referred to as the “Yucs,” or in the long-form, “Yuccaneers.”

That is because there were few if any franchise more misguided, inept and running amok, save Bill Bidwill’s flock, than the Bucs. [read more]

For a while there, Joe was happy. Bucs fans were giddy. It was because the Bucs had an offense that was humming. It was neat to finally see.

First there was rookie quarterback Mike Glennon making a case to be the unchallenged incumbent starter for the 2014 season. Then there was the running game with replacements Mike James and Bobby Rainey. [read more]