Asked about Ronde Barber’s 39th interception Sunday and record-setting career numbers, Raheem Morris explained that Barber’s greatest motivation comes not from stats but from the lingering pain of the 1997 NFL Draft.

In 1997, the Bucs drafted Barber No. 66 overall in the third round and he was the fourth cornerback selected.

“”The thing with Ronde. I don’t even know if he plays for those type of numbers. He plays because he absolutely loves it. He loves the competitive nature. He loves the competitive edge. He goes out every day and he comes to work with the same type of attitude,” Morris said durin The Raheem Morris Show on WDAE-AM 620 Monday. “You know, he’s still angry that he was drafted in the third round. There’s no doubt about it. Fourteen years later, he’s still counting to see exactly who came in his draft, who came in with him. How many people he can outlast, and how many people he can be better than at the end of the day. I think he’s still trying to prove to his draft class that he should have been taken No. 1.”

Whatever motivates Barber is surely working. And maybe this means he’ll stick around past 2010?

Barber surely doesn’t want Darren Sharper (No. 60 overall in ’97) racking up more interceptions while he’s on the couch.

So what the hell actually happened on the Bucs’ D-line on Sunday?

Well, as always, former Bucs DE Steve White has that question answered in full detail on his blog. His Xs and Os heavy Bull Rush column now lives over there.

White breaks down all the D-linemen, and here’s the take on Gerald McCoy, who White is holding to high standard.

Gerald McCoy: I had mixed feelings watching McCoy yesterday. On the one hand he was productive with two tackles and two assists along with a quarterback pressure. He really played the slip blocks and double teams well in my opinion. And his effort, as always, was outstanding.

But on the other hand I thought he regressed as far as his pass rushing went. Especially when it comes to pass rushing play action on early downs. Too many times I saw him just running right down the middle of guards with no plan on how to get off the block to try to get to the quarterback. And I saw him in wayyy too many K Lang’s* against an offensive line that I thought he would dominate. He also came out of a pirate defensive line stunt instead of staying in the gap and he ran what looked to be a pass rush game with another defensive tackle and instead of looping around the opposite side guard where he likely would have gotten a hit on the quarterback, he stopped in the middle of the game and tried to go back the other day.

Obviously those things didn’t hurt us too terribly yesterday, but against a better team it will. On the line stunt and the pass rush game the thing he has to know is that although he might not come free if he runs it right its highly likely that someone else will. But conversely when he doesn’t go where he is supposed to be, with violent intentions, he will end up in a situation where he isn’t in position to make the play and nobody else is either. And when it comes to pass rushing he just has to be ready every play to make a move. Its not like he can’t get good pressure with a bull rush, but for a guy that has his kind of skill and quickness that shouldn’t be his signature move.

Now I don’t want to come down too hard on him because its not like he didn’t play well. But I just have seen what he can do now so that’s what I expect every week. And in fact that’s what that defense is going to need from him every week in order to be special.

Joe was most intrigued by White’s takes on Brian Price, who didn’t get a lot of snaps on Sunday in Carolina. White believes Price’s limited playing time could become an issue.

Former Bucs QB Jeff Carlson

By JEFF CARLSON
JoeBucsFan.com analyst

Former Bucs quarterback Jeff Carlson (1990 & 1991) writes The QB Blast column here at JoeBucsFan.com. Joe is ecstatic to have him firing away. Carlson is often seen as a color analyst on Bright House Sports Network, and he trains quarterbacks of all ages locally via his company, America’s Best Quarterback.

Beating the Cleveland Browns in the home opener was a good start, but not all that impressive or surprising.

Going into the 2010 season, most of us chalked up a “W” in week 1, with the dangerous Josh Cribbs and Jake Delhomme’s history against the Bucs as the Browns’ only hope of success.  Another come from behind win on Josh Freeman’s short resume was also a great positive coming out of the first week.

Far less of us could honestly haveed expect this very young team to go on the road and beat the Carolina Panthers in Week 2. Matt Moore isn’t Drew Brees and no one thinks he ever will be, especially with Jimmy Clausen waiting for his first misstep.

Moore was a question mark all week after getting dinged last Sunday. He didn’t play like he was in a fog, but the fast Buccaneers defense made things difficult all day as they dominated the Panthers. Clausen came on in relief, and we can expect to see him as their starter next week and when they come to Raymond James Stadium in the middle of November.

Raheem Morris has done some unorthodox things in his first year and a half at the helm of the ship and with last year’s jumbled mess, it left us with plenty of room for second guessing.

The most recent opportunity to question his decisions was taking the team to Tropicana Field on a Thursday, the team’s last hard work day of the week. With the week 1 win, they went right back to the baseball field for their Thursday practice and will go back each and every week until their winning streak is snapped. Don’t be surprised if a Thursday Rays game gets postponed so that the Bucs can get into the Trop and get their  “Maddon Mojo” for the week (OK, there won’t be any Rays postponements.). 

Following yesterday’s win, Josh Freeman was asked about his head coach and said the team was beginning to take on his personality and philosophies. In a league of copycats, walking to the beat of your own drum is a brave and risky thing to do. I read a story about Cleveland Browns’ Head Coach Eric Mangini, who was still using Bill Belichick’s practice schedule years after coaching under him. Our young coach is forging his own identity and path. And if he has his big, young franchise quarterback on board, they both might be quickly going in the right direction to get the stadium regularly filled up again, regardless of the economy.

Morris received a lot of good-natured ribbing following last year’s draft for repeatedly saying how large his new quarterback was. The value of that size was fully on display in yesterday’s huge division road win.

The comparisons to Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger are accurate and well-deserved.  Roethlisberger’s ability to shed would-be sackers and extend plays, allowing receivers to get open for big plays, has helped the Steelers to two extra Super Bowl rings.

No one expects the Bucs to reach that status this year, and it would have been fun to see the two go head-to-head this coming weekend, but I’ll settle for another win regardless of who is calling signals for the other team.

It will take a win against an opponent like a fully stocked Pittsburgh team (who will start Charlie Batch or the newly re-signed Byron Leftwich) to really get everyone on board with the Morris/Mark Dominik regime, but starting 2-0 has people already choking on their preseason win total predictions.

Freeman was simply fabulous against the Panthers, carrying the team on his broad shoulders through most of the game, expertly avoiding the rush, steaming his girth for the first down and softly setting himself down past the first-down markers like a wily veteran.

I was pleased with the play-calling as a whole, but would still like the Bucs to find some more running lanes. Their third-down conversion rate was great, but they can’t expect it to be that good week in and week out. To generate more than 20 points a week without a Ronde Barber interception set-ups will probably take a little more diversity in their run-blocking schemes and/or deception with their receiver motions.

I don’t think Cadillac Williams will break much of anything with the straight up run blocking that we have seen so far, leaving Freeman in too many long distance third down situations to have consistent success against the better teams.

With the Rays battling to lead all of Major League Baseball with their young team and their unique manager, we may never see the Bucs in matching plaid sport coats, but a few more wins for Raheem Morris and a lot of teams will be looking to emulate his “RahStyle.”

Not even a business trip to Arizona can keep Derek “Old School” Fournier from putting his thoughts together about the Bucs win.

While happy, “Old School” sees areas where the Bucs must improve if they are to continue leading charmed lives.

Like most reasoned Bucs fans, he knows the Steelers will be a formidable challenge this coming Sunday.

Dick Stockton, Charles Davis and Jim Mora, Jr., break down the Bucs’ win over the Panthers in this FoxSports.com video.

Aside from Josh Freeman Sunday, no Bucs player came up bigger than tight end Kellen Winslow.

Close to not playing at all due to his bum knee, Winslow not just showed up, but played big. In fact, if it’s a key down, look for Freeman to hit Winslow, so notes eye-RAH! Kaufman of the Tampa Tribune, written on the TBO Bucs Twitter feed.

Kellen Winslow’s 8 receptions have each come on third down, where he leads all NFL players. Not too shabby for a guy on one good knee.

You know what that tells Joe? That Winslow is clutch. If all of your catches come on third down, that’s money. That’s what All-Pros do.

It’s very possible that the success of the Bucs offense depends on the health of Winslow’s knee.

In this video of the NFL Network’s Total Access, Marshall Faulk and former Bucs great Warren Sapp discuss if the Bucs, at 2-0 to start the season, are contenders or pretenders.

Among the things Joe learned in this video is that Bucs coach Raheem Morris is an avid fan of the NFL Network. Not to disparage Raheem, but Joe has to ask, who the hell wouldn’t be, unless they are a woman or have subjected themselves to living in an Out House?

There have been countless stories written, words spoken, beers swilled over the Bucs not selling tickets.

Sure, it’s hard to afford tickets if you don’t have a job, or your house is underwater worse than the reefs off Pinellas County.

Now that the Bucs have their best start since their NFC South title season of 2005, Stylez G. White is hoping Bucs fans can somehow scrape together a few bucks and support the team when the Bucs host the Steelers. White Twittered this from Carolina after the Bucs’ second win of the season Sunday.

Want to say thanks to the fans! I will see y’all nxt week for the steelers game! Y’all better be there we gonna need u!

The game is expected to be sold out. Will be interesting to see, after the Bucs have surprised everyone this side of Pat Yasinskas, what the ratio of Bucs to Steelers fans will be.

OK, by now many of Joe’s readers have read Peter King’s mea culpa on his prediction of the Bucs season. Here, in this NBCSports.com video, King describes how the Bucs are still undefeated.

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The Bucs’ defensive mastermind/head coach sees his team’s ugly rushing stats, but he says they don’t represent reality.

Cadillac Williams ate up plenty of clock, had some good runs and kept his defense off the field yesterday, Raheem Morris said.

“It’s not about how much success you have running the ball. It’s about doing it,” Morris said at his noon news conference. “You gotta go up in there and you gotta run the ball. …Success comes with our offense keeping our defense off the field. …Perception is not reality when it comes to the running game.”

Now Joe praised Greg Olson’s commitment to the running game yesterday. It was impressive and showed great maturity from last year, even if it wasn’t very successful. Joe gets that throwing 40 times a game, for this team, isn’t going to work. And Joe understand’s Raheem’s point.

However, Joe knows that the running game is, in fact, broken. After watching the Bucs-Carolina game again, it’s clear to Joe that it’s both the offensive line and Cadillac Williams, who finished with 27 carries for 51 yards.

Somehow, the Bucs, if they’re going to play winning football all season, must improve the running game. That’s reality.

It seems Bucs fans were jumping up and down about Peter King’s confession that he misjudged the Bucs more than Joe would the morning after consumating a lengthy,  intimate, sweaty, heavy-breathing late night encounter with Rachel Watson. 

So Joe can only imagine how Bucs fans will react after reading the words of Sirius NFL Radio’s Adam Schein who, like King, is admitting he may have been offbase in his expectations the Bucs would be abysmal.

In his opening monologue on “The Blitz” today, alongside co-host Rich Gannon, Schein all but begged forgiveness from Bucs fans.

“I am thrilled to eat crow when it comes to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers,” Schein said. “I honestly predicted this team to be wretched.

“How about Josh Freeman growing up before our eyes? The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Rich, are 2-0.”

Like Schein, Gannon gave much credit to Freeman.

“I like the way Josh Freeman is playing, but it was the defense that won. I am really impressed with Josh Freeman, his ability to improvise, his ability to move around and make plays for as big as he is, he is really athletic.

“How about your guy Mike Williams making plays after the catch?”

As Joe has stated many times before: Want your team to get rave reviews from national talking heads? Then have your team win games. It’s that simple.

Watching all of Raheem Morris’ news conferences since he got the Bucs head coaching job, it’s obvious to Joe that Morris often feels that he and his team are treated unfairly by the media.

That first became apparent after Morris dared the media to write something negative about Michael Clayton following his five-catch effort in the Bucs’ season-opening loss to Dallas last year. Previously, the Bucs had gotten heat for re-signing Clayton to a fat contract despite years of poor production.

Since then, Morris has dished out one-liner jabs about negative press rather consistently, and there have been the occasional direct yet playful confrontations. All of which have increased of late.

On Sunday, after the Bucs commanding victory in Carolina, Morris took it all to a new level.

He closed his news conference with body language and a demeanor that lost the the playfullness he typically diplays when knocking the media.

Here’s the exchange and the video link.

Reporter: Rah, How bout if we start right here. We only got eight more to go on the race to 10.

Raheem Morris: That’d be nice. But I’m dealing with you guys, so I know you’re not going to write that. You know, last year we got off to an 0-2 start, and the articles were, ‘Do we have the chance to go 0-16?’ So I’m expecting do-we-have-the-chance-to-go-16-0 articles this week.

That ended the session and, as Joe mentioned, Raheem’s body language screamed anger. The smile was gone. The tension ran deep.

Earlier in the 7-minute news conference, Raheem fielded a question from Tampa Tribune columnist Martin Fennelly and then promptly cut off Fennelly before he could actually ask a question. Raheem stated he didn’t like Fennelly’s pregame column that mentioned the Bucs weren’t honest about Josh Freeman’s thumb injury 10 days prior.

Here’s what Fennelly wrote:

By the way, turns out Freeman not taking snaps at a practice last week wasn’t part of a Bucs “plan.”

Did this team tell the truth about anything?

We’ll know today if 1-0 was a lie, too.

In Joe’s opinion, Fennelly surely wasn’t harsh – didn’t even call out Raheem personally. But here’s the Fennelly-Morris exchange at the postgame news conference yesterday:

Martin Fennelly: Raheem, I know it was last year, but Josh threw 5 picks in this building last year (cutoff by Morris)

Raheem Morris: I know you reminded me in the paper today, Martin. You told me that I lied to you. So I don’t want to lie to you today. We didn’t have any turnovers, and it is what it is.

Later in the news conference, unsolicited, Raheem talked about Fennelly again, but concluded it with a smile and a wink in his direction.

Joe has heard Raheem talk about how he likes “angry workers” on his team, underestimated and highly motivated guys like Ronde Barber and others.  Now it seems like Raheem is an “angry worker” himself. Clearly, the down-on-the-Bucs rhetoric in the local and national media is under his skin, and a 2-0 record is drawing some of it out.

Maybe it’s good. Maybe it’s bad. As long as the Bucs are winning, it really doesn’t matter.

But Joe does think it’s a red flag that Morris was so visibly annoyed by what he perceives to be negative press just minutes after a victory. That tells Joe he’s taking all the chatter too seriously.

The best way to gauge the pulse of a community is to talk to the commoners. By that premise, Bucs quarterback Josh Freeman is king of Charlotte.

As Woody Cummings and his Tampa Tribune entourage were preparing to be whisked back to Tampa, the TBO gang filed into a shuttle van and Cummings overheard the following exchange:

“We’re you headed to today,’’ the driver of the rental car shuttle bus asked.

“Tampa,’’ my associate, Anwar Richardson said.

“Tampa? Man, I can’t believe that Josh Freeman,’’ the driver said. “He looks like the real deal. I’ve got Brett Favre on my fantasy team, but I’m going to pick up Josh Freeman as a free agent.’’

How about that? A fan of a rival NFC South team is so moved by Freeman, he’s ready to jettison an NFL Hall of Fame quarterback for the Bucs young thrower.

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Don’t put it off any longer.

Jon Anik and Cris Carter, of BSPN, discuss the Bucs’ road ass-whipping of Carolina Sunday.

When coffee-slurping, popcorn-shoveling, oatmeal-loving Peter King of Sports Illustrated came out before the season and suggested the Bucs would only win two games, Bucs fans erupted in outrage.

Joe stood back. He knew King was hardly the lone football analyst who predicted desperate hours for the Bucs this season, with a starting roster greener than the grass the Bucs play on at the CITS.

Now, after matching King’s predicted win total for the season in just two games, King has issued a very public mea culpa, via his must-read weekly missive, “Monday Morning Quarterback” on SI.com.

King actually has the Bucs as the No. 15 team in the NFL after one-eigth of the season has passed (damned, one-eighth already?).

15. Tampa Bay (2-0). Of all the surprises in the NFL after two weeks, nothing is weirder to me than the Bucs being 2-0. Boy, was I wrong about them.

It seemed not just Bucs fans were incensed about King’s prediction. So too was Bucs great Ronde Barber who King quoted in his column.

Quote of the Week II

“Tell Peter King we already got our two wins.”

— Tampa Bay cornerback Ronde Barber, in the victorious Buccaneers locker room at Carolina Sunday, after the Bucs beat the Panthers 20-7. Tampa Bay is 2-0. I picked the Bucs to be 2-14 in the SI NFL Preview Issue.

Oops.

Joe is as giddy as the next Bucs fan. This coming Sunday will be a different animal. Pittsburgh’s defense is downright frightening it is so good. Is there a more important player to a team in the NFL than Troy Polamalu? Damn, that guy is good.

At any rate, please read King’s column this morning. He leads his column with a brief interview with Bucs quarterback Josh Freeman.

Yesterday Bucs starting quarterback Josh Freeman looked every bit the black Ben Roethlisberger in the first half, defenders unable to bring him down, Freeman using his feet to buy time and nail targets downfield.

Why, even Peter King, of Sports Illustrated, was moved to set his mug of coffee down, push aside his bowl of oatmeal and pass up a handful of popcorn to Twitter how Freeman looked like a playoff veteran quarterback.

King’s cohort at Sports Illustrated, former Bucs beat writer and current NFL columnist Don Banks, wondered aloud if it is actually the Bucs that got the best quarterback in the draft a year ago.

Here’s a surprising thought: Is it possible that Josh Freeman, Tampa Bay’s 2009 first-round pick, is already further along in his development than either one of the higher-drafted first-round ’09 quarterbacks, Matthew Stafford and Mark Sanchez? I know this: Freeman is the only one to open his second season with a 2-0 record. Freeman totaled 225 yards (43 rushing) and threw a pair of TDs in the Bucs’ win at Carolina.

Joe will say this: Stafford appears to be damned good but thus far in his career the poor guy can’t stay healthy. Part of that is the sieve that is the Lions’ offensive line.

Sanchize looks to be the right-handed version of Matt Leinhart.

Joe’s a bit fired up this morning to hear what kind of love the Bucs might get today on Sirius NFL Radio.

Heck, Mark Dominik might even be interviewed, returning for more of the rock-star love he got on the league’s radio station after the 2010 NFL Draft.

Thinking of NFL Radio got Joe remembering when the Movin’ The Chains crew, Tim Ryan, Pat Kirwan and special guest Bill Cowher, came to Bucs training camp this summer to talk all things Bucs.

They churned out an excellent Xs and Os interview with Josh Freeman – highlights only transcribed by Joe – in which Freeman talked about running the ball more this season. And, of course, he’s done just that.

Tim Ryan: Do me a favor? Can you use those big legs and run the rock this year? Because I think that’s a big, big asset that wasn’t probably utilized enough. Ask [Cowher and Kirwan], they know a quarterback that uses his legs, you’re going to change coverages and do other things because you have that threat from the waist down.

Freeman: No doubt. We catch a lot of man-to-man, but hopefully we won’t see as much this year because those young receivers are able to do a lot of things. But I like seeing two-man, and we really didn’t see a whole lot two-man. …But this weekend Miami has shown a lot of tendencies with their new defensive coordinator …they play a lot of two-man in a lot of third down situations. So look for me this weekend to take off a couple of those times. Yeah, if it opens up I have no problem with running. 

There was a lot more to the interview. But, needless to say, Joe is not surprised to see Freeman lighting it up on the ground this season.

With the absence of a rushing attack, Joe is just speechless watching Freeman carry the Bucs’ offense on his back. Amazing. How hard must he be to prepare for at this point?

It will be quite a fierce test for Freeman on Sunday against Pittsburgh. It might be the toughest defense the Bucs will face all season.

Joe didn’t know this video existed but ran across it last night. Joe likes Gregg Rosenthal of NBCSports.com quite a bit. Therefore, he deserves a round of applause.

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