Bucs general manager Mark Dominik spoke on the Buccaneers Radio Retwork prior to the Seattle game and had a few tidbits to say about how the Bucs are handling the development of rookie quarterback Josh Freeman.

Talk from Raheem the Dream prior to the game suggested the Bucs were going to scale back the playbook. Dominik hinted the secret to doing that was to stick with the running game.

“I think the main thing that you can do for any quarterback is to establish the run,” Dominik said. “I think that takes a lot of pressure off of [Freeman]. It opens up the playbook on third-and-short. I hope to see we can get the run established.”

When asked about how many snaps from center as opposed to lining up in the shotgun, that Freeman takes in practice, Dominik said Freeman takes half of his snaps in practice from behind center and half his snaps in a shotgun.

Look, Joe knows this will be a very busy week for you with Christmas looming. Lots of honeydos among other things to take care of, lots of crowds and traffic to navigate.

And that’s not counting preparing for a Bucs game today.

Since there’s a late kickoff, there’s plenty of time to shake off the cobwebs of a thirsty Saturday night and head out to stock up on your brew, Caybrew. Make sure the fridge has an ample supply for the next week.

Don’t forget that Caybrew is also an intelligent and thoughtful holiday gift for work associates, close friends, loved ones and Rachel Watson.

It’s the holiday season. Why not treat yourself instead of settling for the nasty pilsner swill brewed in Wisconsin? You’re better than that!

Click on the beer or ass below to find Caybrew retailers and smart bar owners near you.

Week 15
Bucs at Seahawks
Kickoff: 4:15 p.m.
TV: WTVT Ch. 13, DirecTV 715
Radio: Buccaneers Radio Network (in Tampa WFUS-FM, 103.5 and WDAE-AM, 620); Sirius Channel 130.
Weather: Per AccuWeather.com, typical miserable Seattle winter weather. Temperature is expected to be 48 degrees at kickoff with rain throughout the game. If there is any benefit to the weather, winds are expected to be mild.
Odds: PerBodog.com, Seahawks -7.
Outlook: This should be a painful game to watch because both teams are miserable. Seattle does have the edge since the Seahawks are at home and Seattle to Tampa Bay may as well be Vladivostok. The Seahawks also play very well at home. How rookie Josh Freeman will handle the caffeinated Qwest Field crowd will be very telling. This will be the first time the Bucs defense will have played against a starting quarterback since defensive coordinator Jim Bates was defrocked, which should tell Bucs fans about how good of a job Raheem the Dream has done as the Bucs defensive coordinator. If the Bucs get blown out, in effect, Raheem the Dream’s career may just be plunging off the Space Needle.

To whet your appetite for this rugged duel between the glory teams of 1976 expansion, Joe brings you previews from the good people of the NFL Network.

NFL Films has a preview which is well-produced, as one might expected from NFL Films.

Then there is the weather forecast courtesy of AccuWeather.

Of course, there’s the game preview from Scott Smith of Buccaneers Insider to take a gander at.

Joe suspects if he was ever fired and paid $5 million a year to do nothing, that somehow Rachel Watson would be able to find a way to comfort Joe.

Merely hours ago, it seemed to be a slam dunk that Chucky would be coaching the Redskins.

Since, several reputable sources including Adam Schefter of BSPN.com, Chris Mortensen of BSPN.com, Chris Landry of Fox Sports Radio and Mike Florio, the creator, curator and overall guru of ProFootballTalk.com, have all reported that Mike Shanahan will be the new Redskins coach.

It seems there’s a reason Chucky is not going to Washington. Seems that Chucky is still hurt over the way Bryan and Joel treated him and as a result, he emotionally is not prepared to coach again this year.

It may not just be emotions as eye-RAH! Kaufman of the Tampa Tribune seems to believe Chucky is out for revenge.

While there is little doubt Gruden will return as a coach at some point, he is still healing from his stunning dismissal in Tampa 11 months ago. He has the look of a man content to draw lucrative paychecks from the Glazers and ESPN for awhile before stepping back into the arena.

Joe can’t blame Chucky. Why work 100-hour workweeks when you can play cheerleader only 16 times a year with Jaws and get paid $5 million for basically nothing?

Joe can only imagine what he would do if he was paid $5 million a year for nothing. Joe believes he would lure Rachel Watson to various tropical locales, hoping to impress upon Rachel the size and girth of Joe’s… wallet.

Joe has already spelled out the plight of the Bucs first Pro Bowl player, Dave Pear.

Pear has a blog and is active in seeking justice for what his and other former NFL players’ bodies have become, having sacrificed their future physical well-being to billionaires so they can become richer, and for NFL fans like Joe to have an excuse to have a good afternoon and get plastered throughout the fall with mass quanities of Caybrew and countless fantasies of bagging Rachel Watson.

Pear, physically, is a shell of  his former athletic self. He can barely get out of bed. He is in constant pain. All due to the constant punishment of playing in the NFL.

Yet the NFL all but turns a deaf ear to his pleas for help, writes Jeff Pearlman of SI.com.

“I wish I never played football. I wish that more than anything. Every single day, I want to take back those years of my life …”

The words are not subtle. They spit from Pear’s mouth, with a blistering contempt normally reserved for drunk drivers. We are speaking via phone. I am in New York, sipping a hot chocolate, leaning back in a chair. My two young children are asleep. A Pretenders song, “2000 Miles,” plays in the background. No worries, no complexities. Pear is sitting at his home in Seattle. His neck hurts. His hips hurt. His knees hurt. His feet hurt. When he wakes up in the morning, pain shoots through his body. When he goes to sleep at night, pain shoots through his body. What does Pear do to stay active?

“My life is simple,” he says. “It’s hard to get out of bed, but eventually I do. I try and do a little walking on the treadmill. I take naps. I go to physical therapy once per week. I read my Bible.”

He is, in basic terms, a train wreck — a football-inflicted train wreck. Pear walks with a cane and, often, simply doesn’t walk at all. He suffers from vertigo and memory loss. Over the past 18 years, he has undergone eight surgeries, beginning with a Posterior Cervical Laminectomy on his neck in 1981, and including disc removal and rod fusion in his back (1987), arthroplasty in his left hip (2008) and, earlier this year, four screws removed from his lower back. Though he chalks up his physical ailments to snap after snap of punishment, he pinpoints the biggest problems back to 1979 and ’80, his final two NFL seasons. While playing for Oakland, Pear suffered a herniated disc in his neck that never improved. Despite the unbearable agony, he says the Raiders urged him to keep playing.

It is beyond Joe’s comprehension how NFL owners and the NFLPA cannot set aside a percentage of gross revenues to help out former players in need, and there are thousands of them.

In Joe’s eyes, this a profound, shameful blight upon American society in the early decades of the 21st Century.

When Joe last checked in personally with David Duggan, the St. Pete cab driver who Aqib Talib allegedly slugged in the back of the head in August while they drove down the Interstate, Duggan was adamant he wasn’t going to let Talib off the hook in State vs. Talib.

Duggan told Joe he wanted his day in court for the misdemeanor batter charge against Talib. And he wanted Talib to pay him handsomely in a civil suit.

Now Duggan seems to have done an about-face on the criminal side of the matter.

He told Joe Smith, of the St. Pete Times, that Talib will be paying him well to avoid a civil lawsuit. And (big surprise) Duggan is now agreeable to giving prosectuors the green light to place Talib in a pre-trial intervention program, which will mean counseling for Raheem The Dream’s wild child and definitely keep him out of jail. 

Whaddya know. Lots of zeros seem to have softened the cabbie.

While Duggan initially resisted the pretrial intervention program, he now says he wants to move on and Talib’s lawyers have told him their client is “really apologetic.”

“I feel for him that he made a big mistake … but I have no animosity toward him,” Duggan said. “I feel he paid his debt to me and society, and the man is really sorry. And he showed that in the civil matter.

Settling quickly in the civil matter — before a suit was filed — keeps a lot of potentially ugly stuff for Talib off the pages of JoeBucsFan.com and out of the MSM, as all the details of the suit would have been public record.

And since Talib surely will avoid a trial, those who want to know what Angelo Crowell and Torrie Cox told prosectutors about what happened in the cab that night will have to wait until the case is closed and Joe can get his hands on the case file. …It should be worth the wait. 

As Joe pointed out earlier today, one can make valid arguments to keep Raheem the Dream one more year or that he should be sent packing in three weeks (or earlier).

Robert Bolund of the NationalFootballPost.com is of the mind that Raheem the Dream is “likely out.”

Bolund lists the coaches that, in his mind, are walking a tightrope between employment and unemployment. He pulls no punches on Raheem the Dream.

Raheem Morris… [h]as demonstrated repeatedly that he wasn’t ready for the job. Tampa is a profitable team, despite still paying Jon Gruden not to coach. Making a big splash might help sell tickets. This franchise should not be this bad.

While Bolund makes some salient points about Raheem the Dream, Bolund blows all of his credibility when he also lists in the same group with Raheem the Dream, Eric Mangini and Jim Zorn such respected coaches as Mike Tomlin and Jeff Fisher.

The mystery of whether Raheem the Dream will survive is anyone’s guess right now. There are valid arguments on both sides of the fence.

There is little debate that Raheem the Dream cannot or should not be the fall guy. There are plenty of people to point fingers at, including a number of assistants.

That’s the gist of a comment from eye-RAH! Kaufman of the Tampa Tribune. Posting on TBO’s Bucs Twitter feed, Kaufman noted either way, there will be a housecleaning of the coaching staff in the coming weeks.

Even if Raheem Morris remains, the Bucs coaching staff figures to be overhauled next season through resignations and dismissals.

If it was up to Joe, the entire offensive staff should be put under the microscope. The defense has improved since defensive coordinator Jim Bates was defrocked. The offense has been a cluster (youknowwhat) since Day 1.

Problem is, Raheem the Dream will be on thin ice if he returns. Very thin ice. If the Bucs continue to suck next year, Raheem the Dream may not even finish the regular season.

What decent coach(es) is going to want to come to a team when he may have to pack his bags and move (again) after possibly one year?

In his weekly podcast on TBO.com, Woody Cummings of the Tampa Tribune talks all things Bucs.

One of the subjects Cummings goes in depth with is the Bucs running game, or lack thereof. Cummings states, “I don’t think it’s one thing, I think there are several things” ailing the Bucs run game.

In particular, he blames the play-calling of Greg Olson and his penchant for giving up on the run so early. Cummings also points a finger at the 2-2-1 rotation which, he feels, prevents a running back from getting into the flow of a game.

Vacation Man of BSPN actually believes Bucs linebacker Barrett Ruud is more valuable than tackle Donald Penn.

Bucs offensive tackle Donald Penn and linebacker Barrett Ruud are near polar opposites in Joe’s mind.

Aside from the fact the two play on opposite sides of the ball, their worth to the Bucs is on opposite spectrums.

One could make a legitimate argument the Bucs best player is Penn. He had owned some of the game’s best defensive ends this year.

Ruud has been a horrible disappointment. His play in defrocked defensive coordinator Jim Bates’ s(p)itty scheme was dreadful beyond words. He was seen more often than not chasing ball carriers downfield rather than stopping them at the line.

Yet Vacation Man of BSPN.com suggests Ruud is more valuable to the Bucs than Penn while participating in an NFC South chat on BSPN.com.

Kevin (Scranton, PA)
Hey Pat, what’s the over/under that both Penn and Rudd are back in Tampa next year?

Vacation Man
I think they’ll both be back. If I had to prioritize, I’d say Ruud first, then Penn.

Whoa! By what logic would anyone think Ruud should be kept before Penn? Already this season Penn has likely saved rookie quarterback Josh Freeman from getting beheaded. It’s beyond a stretch to even consider Ruud an average player based on this season’s performance.

In football, it all starts up front. And while the Bucs offensive line has mostly been underperforming, Penn has not.

"Hey Bruce, let's go crash the White House tonight. If those two dolts can slip in without being noticed, we can sneak in. Hell, you got connections, your brother was a senator, bro'."

Peter King of SI.com has reported that a day after Bruce Almighty was hired by Redskins owner/tyrant Danny Snyder, Chucky is in Washington.

But before you jump to a conclusion like Joe did, remember Chucky works for BSPN’s Monday Night Football and the crew pulls into the city on a Friday for production meetings each week.

The Redskins host the Giants Monday night.

But how delicious of an irony is this that Chucky shows up to cover a team he’s largely regarded as working for next season?

The white smoke coming out of the chimney at Redskins Park. You saw Bruce Allen get the GM job there Thursday. You know Bruce Allen and a certain former coach with a haircut like Dwight Schrute’s were joined at the hip in Tampa and produced the Bucs’ only Super Bowl victory over. Guess who’s coming to the Park today to prep for ESPN’s Monday-nighter against the Giants? That’s right. Jon Gruden.

Whoops! Mr. King made a major screw-up there. Can anyone pick out the error?

The last time Doug Williams left the Bucs, he went to the USFL before landing a job as the Redskins’ backup quarterback in 1986. That year he threw one pass.

A backup again the following season, Williams was named the Redskins’ starter for the playoffs and led Washington to one of the all-time Super Bowl routs to cap the ’87 season.

(Joe just thinks that’s a cool story.)

Now it seems that Williams, currently the Bucs director of pro personnel, is eager to go back to Washington.

With the ink still wet on Bruce Allen’s new contract as the Redskins’ general manager, Williams was on the phone with the Washington Examiner telling Redskins nation what a great guy his former boss is.

And Williams hardly showed any enthusiasm about staying in Tampa.

On his own interest for a job here: “That’s strictly up to Bruce. It wouldn’t be good to say that now.”

Let Joe translate: “I can’t wait to get to Washington!”

Joe wonders whether Mark Dominik and the Bucs might make a public play to keep Williams from bolting.

Or perhaps they won’t care one darn bit, as was suggested by Scott Reynolds, The Grand Wizard of PewterReport.com, the Internet-only, Bucs fan site best known for its defunct print magazine. 

Two weeks ago, Reynolds informed his followers that not-to-be-named player agents are telling him Williams is subpar in his gig as Bucs director of pro personnel and is likely to be fired by Mark Dominik following this season.

If Williams leaves, regardless of why, Joe would be bummed out to see him exit One Buc Palace. It just feels right to have the Bucs icon in town.

For the past 13 years or so, there was no such thing as a culture of losing with the Bucs.

Sadly, that may change.

It’s very likely the Bucs will only win one game this year. And unless a number of drastic things happen, the Bucs will likely lose a lot next year as well.

Raheem the Dream is concerned that losing culture may rear its ugly head with the Bucs, reports Anwar Richardson of the Tampa Tribune.

Yet, the Bucs (1-12) are optimistic if they close out this season with three wins, starting with Seattle (5-8) on Sunday, their young players can turn around this franchise next year.

“You better build it in these young guys,” Morris said. “And then next year, you have other people helping you build that. Just like in ’96 when Derrick Brooks, Warren Sapp, (John) Lynch and those guys came here; they built that. They started to build it and then new guys came in, Ronde Barber, Brian Kelly and those types of guys came in and they put it in those guys.

“So it starts running, and after a while you have a whole bunch of guys sitting around with the same mentality and you go out and you play very well.”

Color Joe skeptical. Of course Joe hopes for the best. But unless Bryan and Joel go on a spending spree to shore up a number of holes on this team, specifically the defensive front seven and a wide receiver or two, Joe cannot see the Bucs pulling off a winning season and making a playoff run next year.

Joe sure  hopes he’s wrong about that.

Horribly overrated Suzy Kolber, Mark Schlereth and Tedy Bruschi of BSPN discuss the Bucs chances against the Seahawks Sunday.

Joe’s good friend Joe Henderson, the veteran Tampa Tribune columnist, has penned a column expressing some major love for Cadillac Williams.

Essentially, Henderson calls Cadillac the brightest spot on a dark Bucs season. It’s hard to argue the point, considering how far Cadillac has come and how bad the Bucs are.

But Henderson seems to think Caddy is the same guy who tore up the NFL as a rookie.

The damage his knees sustained doesn’t appear to have robbed him of the explosion that made him such a sensation as a rookie.

Now Joe has to draw a line in the sand there. Joe firmly believes that Caddy is nowhere near the player he was in 2005, when he rushed for 1,178 yards in just 14 games.

And Joe would even go so far as to say there would be little or no interest in Cadillac among other NFL teams right now.

Cadillac has had only four good games this season. He’s a great story and is the Bucs shining light, as Henderson explains.

 But barring a tremendous finish to the season, in Joe’s mind it’s time for the Bucs to move on to a new running back.

Swine flu and death are no joke. But the St. Louis Rams are a complete joke for cancelling their practice Thursday because “five or six” guys on the team had flulike symptoms.

Don’t the 1-12 Rams realize Joe sees right through this stunt to screw up the team even further? It’s nothing more than a ruse to help them secure the No. 1 pick in the 2010 NFL Draft and rip defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh from the Bucs’ clutches. Per the Associated Press, these Rams aren’t even confirmed cases of Swine flu or any other kind of flu.

At Joe’s office, his 37-year-old boss legitimately died from swine flu in August but business never missed a beat. The company installed hand sanitzer machines on the walls and issued a “be careful” message.

At Joe’s kid’s school, young children have had swine flu, yet kids still played on the playground and picked their noses and flicked the boogers at each other. Nobody ran for cover like the St. Louis Lambs.

What a bunch of wusses.

Send the sick players home and put the other guys on the damn field. Let them shower at home as a precaution. But cancel practice and vacate the headquarters?

Bucs fans should be outraged.

Pat Kirwan and Jason Horowitz of CBSSports.com take a peek at the Bucs-Seahawks game.

For much of the video, Kirwan describes why Freeman is struggling and that Bucs fans need not worry. Raheem the Dream’s struggles are a different story and Kirwan also explains why the Bucs rookie head coach is struggling.

"I sure hope Danny Snyder reads Gary Shelton. I'm sick of needing Jaws to translate everything that moron Stuart Scott says when he tries to talk to me."

It’s just too obvious to Joe that Chucky will be in Washington as coach of the Redskins. Joe wrote about this months ago.

Now that Chucky’s hand-picked, golfing/Ice Palace bunker buddy Bruce Almighty was hired by the Redskins as general manager, Joe thinks it is just a matter of days before Chucky takes over the Redskins.

Veteran columnist Gary Shelton of the St. Petersburg Times not only agrees with Joe, he’s all but begging Redskins owner/tyrant to pull the trigger.

“Bruce Allen is a proven winner,” Snyder said Thursday.

Oh.

You probably remember things differently, don’t you? Allen was the guy who drafted Michael Clayton and Gaines Adams and Dexter Jackson. He was the guy who signed Todd Steussie and Derrick Deese and Charlie Garner as free agents. He was the guy who told his fans that Chris Simms wasn’t hurt and David Boston wasn’t guilty and the Bucs weren’t chasing Brett Favre (This just in: Gruden has since said he went to bed thinking Favre would be a Buc the next morning.)

That was Allen, too, who treated the truth as if he was afraid of going over the cap. He was smug, and he was distant, and he disliked reporters as much as many of them disliked him.

Sure, Chucky (and Allen) made some head-scratching personnel moves. But Joe suspects if Chucky does wind up in the district, Chucky won’t try some stunt like moving LaRon Landry to linebacker.

Despite zero evidence, Jason La Canfora of the NFL Network has the hunch that Father Dungy may just be the coach of the Bucs next season.

Howard, Germany
With the coaching carrousel starting up, what jobs (if any) are being discussed under the radar?

Jason La Canfora, NFL Network
Thanks for checking in from Germany. Love your country. Covering the World Cup there in 2006 was a highlight of my career. Keep an eye on Tampa. Things could get interesting there. Some people still beleive Tony Dungy might come in and save the day. Raheem Morris made some weird comments lately. Maybe he’s better fit to be a coordinator. If that job opened up Bill Cowher would be a name to watch as well, but Dungy would make a lot of sense. I know he’s said he isn’t interested in coaching, but he lives down there, maybe has unfinished business there, could find some role in that organization to stablilize things even if it isn’t as head coach.

Look, Joe would just wish the Dungyphiles forget about Father Dungy here in the Tampa Bay area. He quit coaching, and he didn’t get the job done when he was here. Turn the page people.