Aqib Talib’s legal team is back in court this morning in Dallas County in what seems like the next step in setting up a plea deal for the allegedly gun-toting, trigger-happy cornerback accused of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in March.

Joe expects a deal to come at some point — not necessarily today —  but only if Talib doesn’t have to admit to any kind of gun possession. There’s flimsy evidence that he used a gun, and admitting to gun play surely won’t go over well with Roger Goodell when it comes down to a possible league suspension.

As for that suspension, Talib’s got his fellow players apparently fighting hard to ensure all crimes committed during the lockout don’t count toward the league’s discipline code.

Roy Cummings, of The Tampa Tribune, noted comments at NationalFootballPost.com explaining that players are taking the issue very seriously.

In a breakdown of the top 10 issues being negotiated, nationalfootballpost.com founder and ESPN NFL business analyst Andrew Brandt says the players are fighting for a clause that calls for no discipline for lockout conduct errors.

 “Players feel (Commissioner Roger) Goodell has jumped the shark with overzealous discipline in a Policy not collectively bargained. They want an independent arbitrator for appeals and with no governing CBA, no discipline for lockout conduct,’’ Brandt wrote in his NFP column.

It’s interesting. Even if the asinine lockout leader Goodell gets his way and the league will discipline players for lockout funny business, one might think Goodell won’t use a heavy hand on any incident during the lockout as a nod to the fresh, new agreement with the players.

After all, he won’t come out with any disclipline until football returns, which means a new era of peace and harmony is in place. Hammering down on Talib would seem like a bizarre step out of the gate.

Stats are for losers, Raheem Morris tells us, but among those that stand out is Team Glazer being a very low spender on player salaries for a very long time. The numbers don’t lie.

Last year was no exception, as the Bucs were super young and the salary cap disappeared freeing up teams to spend as much or as little as they wanted. Team Glazer ran a mean and lean 10-6 ship.

Today, ProFootballTalk.com guru Mike Florio shares that the owners are proposing teams must spend mass quantities of cash and the divide between the salary cap floor and ceiling is likely to tighten with an increasingly likely new labor agreement for 2011.

The offer made by the owners on March 11 included a commitment to spend 90 percent of the salary cap in cash. This would prevent teams from relying on “dead money” arising from trading or cutting players with large contracts in order to meet the minimum, and it would require all teams to spend a lot of money.

If this provision makes it into the final deal, it means that teams on the low side of the spending equation (and several were millions below what the cap floor would have been in 2010) will have to spend a lot of money in 2011.

If this happens, and the football gods seem to be happily warning it will soon, Team Glazer is going to be sitting on a mountain of money it will have to spend — literally many tens of millions of dollars this season.

The Bucs could dive into free agency to meet their new financial demands, but they could decide to find creative ways to extend deals of younger players with some up front cash and stick to their new stated core beliefs of building through the draft — call it the post-Haynesworth era.

Joe thinks of guys like Mike Williams, Legarrette Blount, Geno Hayes and others making peanuts by NFL standards, and Joe wonders whether the Bucs would rather reward those guys as their first option. 

As Joe has mentioned more than a few times, there is perhaps no more polarizing player on the Bucs roster than linebacker Barrett Ruud. Many Bucs fans crumble their empty beer cans and throw them at their dogs over frustration that Barrett Ruud is not Jack Lambert.

In short, Bucs fans want Ruud to play in a way that his coaches do not.

The subject of Barrett Ruud came up yesterday when Joe was listening to “Movin’ the Chains” heard exclusively on SiriusXM NFL Radio co-hosted by Pat Kirwan and Tim Ryan.

Kirwan brought up who the Giants would go for at linebacker: Barrett Ruud or Paul Posluszny. Kirwan noted that Ruud was a better fit for the Giants and Ryan was torn, but he finally admitted he likely would have Ruud as a Giants linebacker.

Now months ago, Joe thought about The Poz playing with the Bucs and quickly dismissed it. Not a good fit.

Since Joe didn’t go to a BCS conference school (Joe regrets not going to Illinois when he had the chance, only because Joe wishes he had a big time conference school to call his own when swilling beers on fall Saturday afternoons. Now, Joe is not ashamed where he graduated from, in particular Joe caught a current-day NFL coach trying to steal a keg from him), Joe had to pick and choose schools from various conferences to sort of call his own and watch and follow. Penn State is Joe’s Big Ten school of choice.

The Poz is Joe’s favorite college linebacker. Dude personifies a Penn State linebacker: strong, physical, mean, smart, ballhawk. He’s a beast! In three NFL seasons The Poz has damned near 400 tackles. Impressive.

But The Poz could not replace Ruud. The Poz has hasn’t played in a 43 defense since his breakout junior season at Happy Valley. His senior season, to take advantage of so many solid linebackers, Penn State defensive coordinator Scrap Bradley used a four-linebacker set.

So many Ruud supporters — Kirwan among them — stress that Ruud’s greatest attribute is calling plays and getting players in the proper position to make plays. Given how young the Bucs defense is, this is not a lost trait.

Given the fact The Poz hasn’t played in a 43 defense since Bobby Bowden was relevant, some five years ago, Joe cannot see how The Poz could pull off what Ruud pulled off in being the leader of the Bucs defense. He hasn’t played in a Cover-2 defense in six years and even then, Penn State didn’t play much Cover-2.

Selfishly, emotionally, Joe would love to see Posluszny play for the Bucs.

Thinking with a clear head, Joe knows The Poz couldn’t replace Ruud.

The obsessive stat geeks at ProFootballFocus.com have completed poring over endless NFL game film to come up with another one of their homemade stats: pass blocking efficiency.

Now Joe rarely takes their data too seriously, but it’s always interesting, sometimes useful, and at times shines a harsh or happy spotlight on a player.

Today, Jeff Faine gets their Sean Mahan award. Their pass blocking analysis tags entrepreur/captain Faine as the worst pass blocking center in the NFL by a significant margin in 2010. He played in eight games (24o passing blocking snaps). Yet Jeremy Zuttah checks in as the seventh best (443 snaps).

As for guards, Davin Joseph and Ted Larsen are ranked as the fourth and sixth worst, respectively.

Now that probably proves Raheem Morris’ line that stats are for losers. The Bucs finished 10-6, which is all that matters, and Josh Freeman wasn’t exactly running for his life all the time. 

But one has to wonder if Faine could find himself on the bench or off the Bucs. He earns five times Zuttah’s salary, is five years older, and simply may not be better. He’s certainly not as durable.

There’s no need for the Bucs to hurt their depth by cutting Faine, but would the captain embrace a reserve role?

Hat tip to the great Cork Gaines, curator, founder and chief guru over at JoeRaysFan.com/RaysIndex.com for this video.

Last night, Cork noted the maturing “bromance” between Raheem Morris and Joe Maddon, who are shown together following the Rays smothering of the Red Sux last night. There’s clearly love and admiration in both men’s eyes. Their relationship has been written about by Joe many times.

Hey, Raheem gets love all over town. On Monday, Joe brushed elbows with Raheem at a V.I.P. event in Palm Harbor. Raheem graciously accomodated fans’ autographs and pictures throughout the three hours Joe saw him there. He may even be challenging Mark Dominik for the rockstar tag.

Amid increasingly positive rumors that the asinine lockout may be over with in a matter of a few weeks — Joe will see it when he believes it — there is still a dearth of news from NFL camps.

So to fill the void, NFL writers from the four-letter network have decided to create lists of top 10 players in various positions. Football blogger Pat Yasinskas was also involved.

So when it came to choosing the top left tackles in the game, Bucs left tackle Donald Penn found his name on the list and came in tied for No. 8 with Marcus McNeill of San Diego.

The longest shot. Somewhere, former Tampa Bay general manager Bruce Allen and coach Jon Gruden are smiling at Penn’s name appearing on this list. It’s true, they headed the regime that signed Penn as a free agent in 2007 after he was cut by Minnesota in 2006. Then again, they were also the ones who signed Luke Petitgout, and Penn only got a chance to play because Petitgout turned out to be washed up. I used to subscribe to the theory that you needed to use a first-round pick to get a good left tackle. But Penn has shown that’s not necessary. In his case, he simply made the most of his shot at playing time and turned it into a $48 million contract as training camp started last year.

Well, actually the guy smiling the most is Bucs rock star general manager Mark Dominik, for it was Penn who caught Dominik’s eye and it was Dominik who pushed for Chucky and Bruce Almighty to sign Penn.

Lord only knows what kind of turnstile would have been signed by Chucky or Bruce Almighty as a free agent if left to their own devices.

The Bucs pass rush last year was gruesome. In most games, there was no pass rush, gruesome or not.

Bucs rock star general manager Mark Dominik knew this and tried to rectify the abyss by drafting both Adrian Clayborn and Da’Quan Bowers with his first two picks.

If not for his injured knee, Bowers would have been long gone by the time the Bucs picked in the first round much less been sitting there for the taking in the second round.

Despite the bum knee, Dominik told Dan Parr of ProFootballWeekly.com during the draft that Bowers would not require additional surgery.

Dominik is so confident in the health of Bowers that Parr writes the Bucs expects Bowers to start at left end when games begin this fall… if they begin.

After a long fall in the draft, DE Da’Quan Bowers was taken by the Bucs in the second round with the 51st overall pick. This, for a player who was once considered a top-five pick, and a potential No. 1 overall choice. Bowers’ stock plummeted because of concerns about his surgically repaired knee and long-term durability. Teams had strong reservations about him, but GM Mark Dominik told PFW after the draft that the Bucs do not believe he needs any more surgery on the knee in the short term and also said the Bucs will be flexible with his practice time to limit wear and tear. The team is counting on Bowers to be the starting left end, and its defense will be much more formidable if he and fellow DE Adrian Clayborn, the team’s first-round pick, energize a pass rush that was one of the league’s least productive in 2010.

So let’s presume Parr’s information is accurate and Bowers starts at left end. Who goes? Are Tim Crowder’s days numbered? What of Alex Magee who is rumored to be a favorite of both Dominik and Bucs coach Raheem Morris?

Or will the Bucs simply wash their hands of the Kyle Moore experiment?

The official endorsements of Aqib Talib’s return to the Bucs keep racking up. This time, it’s the most important player voice chiming in: Josh Freeman.

Freeman shared his love and respect for Talib in a chat with Woody Cummings of The Tampa Tribune.

“He’s been coming out and he looks great; he’s in great shape, and he’s in great spirits,’’ Freeman said of Talib, who faces a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon stemming from an incident he was involved in earlier in the offseason in Texas.

“Obviously our prayers are with him with what he’s going through right now,’’ Freeman added. “ But he’s a hell of a football player so we hope to have him back and hope everything works out for him.

“But as for how he looks, he’s run some (passing) routes for us on offense, he’s played some defense for us and he’s really just been Aqib, that high-energy guy we all know.’’

Talib has another court date scheduled in Dallas County court this week, which means a deal could be struck at that time or the case will progress toward Talib entering a plea in the somewhat flimsy aggravated assault with a deadly weapon case against him.

Despite unsourced claims by the St. Pete Times to the contrary, Joe is certain the only thing that would prevent Talib’s return to the Bucs is being found guilty of a felony. In Joe’s opinion, that’s about as likely as the Bucs signing Tiki Barber.

The word has been sent by the unquestioned Bucs leader: It matters not if you once owned a haberdashery or are embroiled in a legal matter for your very own freedom or are trying to sample every eatery in Hillsborough County or simply are hiding behind your agent.

If you claim to be a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a three-day minicamp is mandatory.

Both Victoria Lim of Bright House Sports Network and Woody Cummings of the Tampa Tribune have put the word out: Josh Freeman is demanding anyone expecting to be on the Bucs roster this fall is expected, no, required to be in attendance for a three-day minicamp, replete with two-a-days, run by Freeman himself.

It seems the Bucs third-year quarterback is doing his best to prepare the Bucs for the upcoming season, despite the asinine NFL lockout. Hence, all hands on deck later this month or Freeman will consider missing players AWOL.

“I don’t know about some of the free agents and rookies, but we’re hoping to have about 45 guys there,” Freeman said Monday. “We’re going to try to get everybody in and go over some scheme stuff and even install some stuff.

“I held on to some of my playbooks from the (regular) season and we’re putting together scripts and everything and just trying to get things back to normal as much as possible.”

Damn, what the hell is not to like about Josh Freeman? He keeps this up, and Joe may have to make room among his lust for Rachel Watson and his mancrush Albert Pujols.

Joe just cannot say enough good things about what Freeman is trying to accomplish in this trying NFL time.

Given plenty of free time thanks to this asinine lockout, Matt Williamson of Scouts, Inc. is doing quite a bit of research, specifically on the NFC South of late.

In ranking the most underrated players in the NFC South, Williamson chose a Bucs linebacker. No, not Barrett Ruud. Rather, Williamson thinks the most overlooked player on the Bucs roster is Quincy Black, who Williamson raves about.

Quincy Black, linebacker: Black is up for free agency, as is MLB Barrett Ruud, so the Bucs used a third-round pick on Mason Foster. Foster could conceivably play any of the three linebacker spots in Tampa Bay’s defense, but I see his best fit in the middle. I think the Buccaneers agree with me and will do everything possible to keep Black, even though he isn’t as well known as Ruud. That would be the wise move, because Black is an up-and-comer who has exceptional range and playmaking skills. He does everything well and never should come off the field. Black is the perfect fit in this defense and could be poised to excel behind Tampa’s young and ultra-talented defensive line. If there is a choice to be made between Black and Ruud, the answer is a very simple one: Black.

Maybe Joe falls in the category of the Barrett Ruud haters. Joe really hasn’t seen Black do anything that would make Joe believe the Bucs will break the bank for him. Largely, in Joe’s eyes, Black more often than not is invisible.

From what Joe has learned from astute football minds, Ruud is the most valuable linebacker the Bucs currently have. But Joe’s a consistency kinda guy. So of course Joe would hope Black returns.

More importantly, Joe hopes Black returns and becomes more of a force.

Esteemed Bucs beat writer Woody Cummings, of TBO.com and The Tampa Tribune, brings more good NFL labor news in the form of an overheard conversation between Bryan Glazer and a longtime Bucs fan at a funeral last week.

(Talk about having an ear to the ground.)

Glazer brought positive vibes to the lockout front. Here’s a snippet, but Joe suggests you read the whole report:

“So relax,’’ Glazer said. “For the next seven weeks, just turn on some music, put on your headphones and relax. Football will be back. Don’t worry. Football will be back.’’

Encouraging words indeed. And they came just before a report broke suggesting the two sides in the NFL labor impasse had actually made enough progress in negotiations to possibly close on a deal within the next couple weeks.

Now Joe’s really getting excited, especially on the heels of oatmeal-gorging, popcorn-shoveling Peter King’s words earlier.

How freaking cool would it be to have free agency open on, say July 5. Not that the Bucs will do anything terribly exciting, but if the salary cap returns, it’s going to get wildly interesting in a hurry around these parts.

Coffee.

Donut.

Hope.

Joe can’t resist injecting optimism into this bright Monday morning.  

Joe doesn’t write about the details and developments of the asinine NFL lockout — no sense in boring everyone to tears — but Joe does follow the situation very closely.

Sports Illustrated football scribe Peter King, a man with piles of great sources, is spewing lots of optimism today about the end of the lockout in his Monday Morning Quarterback column on SI.com. Aside from referencing progress in meetings and various other stuff, King lays out a loss of $700 million if preseason games are cancelled. .

There are 11 nationally televised preseason games, beginning with the St. Louis-Chicago Hall of Fame Game on Aug. 7 on NBC. Each game has 60 ad buys, 30 seconds apiece. That’s 660 spots. Altogether, the preseason generates around $700 million in TV, gate and ancillary revenue. The reason this matters is if preseason games are gone, there’s going to be less 2011 money to share with players. The owners won’t like that, and the players won’t like it when the owners cut their offer once that money’s out the window.

Therefore, each side knows it’s to their advantage — both for getting players in shape as well as keeping the finances from plummeting — to make sure the preseason goes on as scheduled.

I said in SI the other day my over-under for a deal is July 4. I might say July 10 now, but I still think chances are better there will be a deal than there won’t — and that deal will come within a month.

Joe’s deciding to be giddy today, though aware this could turn out disappointing.

But $700 million smells like solid motivation to Joe.

Joe’s a Pat Kirwan kinda guy. Whether listening to him with co-host Tim Ryan heard exclusively on SiriusXM NFL Radio or reading his work on NFL.com, Joe stops what he is doing and pays attention.

(Joe decided to drop some cash this weekend and buy Kirwan’s book “Take Your Eye Off The Ball.” Joe was hooked by the time he finished page three of the introduction. It’s that good. Really good Father’s Day present. In the third chapter, Joe learned Kirwan was once an advance scout for the Bucs.)

Joe knows that Kirwan hates lists. Once in a while, a caller will ask Kirwan to list the best players at a position and Kirwan will explain why he hates lists.

But Kirwan likes groups. Joe heard Kirwan state this a month or so ago but he finally got around to putting fingertips to keyboard and detail his top groups of NFL quarterbacks.

Kirwan has Bucs quarterback Josh Freeman in Group C.

3. Josh Freeman, Buccaneers: A rising star who reminds me of a young Warren Moon. Cool under pressure with a big arm. He led his team to 10 wins in his first full season as a starter.

Kirwan has Freeman in the same group as Sam Bradford, Joe Flacco, Carson Palmer and Matt Schaub.

Personally, Joe finds Palmer to be way overrated. It’s been years since Palmer was a legitimate threat at quarterback. Schaub? Eh.

On the bright side, Freeman is rated by Kirwan higher than Jay Cutler and Mark Sanchez but lower than Tony Romo and Michael Vick.

What does this tell Joe? If Freeman would date Carrie Underwood and Jessica Simpson and marry a hottie blonde sports reporter, it will increase his quarterbacking reputation.

Joe was geeked as anyone that LeGarrette Blount busted onto the scene last year and literally made the offense blow up. One could argue Blount was the Bucs’ MVP.

But Matt Williamson of Scouts, Inc. is not moved. Even with Blount blowing up opposing defenses, Williamson is of the mind the Bucs have the worst set of running backs in the NFC South.

But here is what I think of Blount. I see what everyone else sees in him in that he obviously has tremendous size and power, and also has nimble enough feet to make people miss and even jump over defenders in space. He is impressive. But I also see a wildly inconsistent player, which I will admit is not a huge red flag or uncommon for a rookie at any position. But I would like to see him run with aggression on every carry. He did run for over 1,000 yards in just 13 games. But Blount is also a liability in all phases of the passing game and can help his team only on early downs.

There is very little behind Blount to get overly excited about and I fully expect the Bucs to be players in the free-agent running back market — most likely shopping for a good receiving threat out of the backfield.

Kareem Huggins has some of those third-down back type of traits. But he appeared in only three games last season and ended up on injured reserve. Despite a very impressive preseason, Huggins has just four career NFL carries. Counting on him might be unwise.

Well, Joe thinks Williamson is nitpicking on Blount, but the rest of his argument holds water.

To many Bucs fans ire, Joe wrote early and often last offseason that the Bucs rushing attack was impotent. Joe loves Earnest Graham and Cadillac Williams to ,but as fulltime starters sharing the backfield they certainly weren’t getting the job done.

If anything, the emergence of Blount has shown that Cadillac is most effective and valuable at this point in his career coming off the bench as a third-down, change-of-pace kind of guy.

It was not a coincidence that when Blount starting running like crazy, the entire offense for the Bucs blew up because suddenly defenses had to concern themselves with the run, whereas before, they just worried about the pass and dared the Bucs to run.

Big financial publications and various Euro sports sites are abuzz this morning regarding a credible English newspaper’s report that claims Team Glazer is preparing to take Manchester United public for (drumroll) a $2.8 billion valuation.

The report claims Team Glazer has done some diligence with the Hong Kong stock exchange.

So what does Team Glazer’s kickball team have to do with the Bucs? Take your pick: probably nothing, possibly a lot, or you couldn’t care less.

Regardless, Joe hopes Team Glazer takes the team public. They’d be flush with more cash, which surely can’t hurt the Bucs, and Joe could buy some shares just to say Team Glazer reports to him — a shareholder.

And speaking of kickball, the beloved football shrine of the Bucs was invaded by 27,000+ kickball lovers last night. These fans paid top dollar for a chance to see the house that Brooks built desecrated by diving Panamanian sissies playing the wrong sport on a field stripped of its rightful football lines.

To make matters worse, the Panamanian sissies beat and disgraced the United States team, whose fans littered the C.I.T.S. field with smokebombs throughout the game.

Yes, Joe was there, humiliated for his country, his Bucs, and by the college kid sitting behind Joe who vomited bile and Bud Light on Joe’s back.

Joe can’t wait for real football season.

Everyone’s favorite right tackle, James Lee, fed hundreds of people Saturday and held a free football camp for hundreds of kids in his old stomping grounds of Belle Glade, the tough streets of Muck City, as its known in sugar country.

Now Joe’s already talked to Lee and wrote about Lee’s great charitable work with his foundation and Muck City Fest, but hey, yesterday was the annual James Lee Day in Belle Glade, which Joe thinks is pretty damn cool.

The local media in South Florida was all over Lee and many of his NFL and Bucs buddies working with kids. Here’s a quote from WPTV-Ch.5.

“It’s very important that the kids get out and they see what I’ve done, what I can do and that it’s possible for them,” [Lee] said.

Lee’s teammates and friends in the NFL were happy to lend a hand.

“We all grew up in the same type of environment, the same type of neighborhoods and we made it out,” explained Buccaneers player Elbert Mack, “and the sky is the limit for them.”

Joe applauds all this great community work by various Bucs.

In the throes of this asinine lockout, news is slow for both the NFL and the Bucs. So ProFootballWeekly.com put together a power ranking for NFL coaches.

In the magazine’s 2011 rankings, it has Bucs coach Raheem Morris right in the middle of the pack at No. 16.

16. Raheem Morris — Young gun slowly climbing the ladder with confidence.

Initially, Joe was taken aback by this, mainly because of some of the coaches ranked just ahead and behind Raheem. The Bucs third-year head coach is rated just again of always angry Marvin Lewis. Yeah, Lewis had two playoff teams but he has as many playoff wins as Joe.

Just ahead of Raheem is Norv Turner. Yeah, Turner has had playoff teams but he rarely seems to get the most of his talent and Turner has had damned talented teams.

But if one looks at the coaches rated above Raheem, it seems like a fair ranking.

Call Joe a sucker, but Joe’s a compulsive Bucs junkie that actually paid $12 to read a story about Doug Williams and Raheem Morris yesterday.

Yes, Joe forked over the cash to the esteemed Ruston Daily Leader, a newspaper covering the area around Grambling State University, in order to read a feature behind the cloak of paid content. The story seemed to promise revealing and exciting news of Raheem’s participation at Williams’ charity event in the area last weekend.

Well, it wasn’t that exciting. However, during a speech at the Horseshoe Casino in Bossier City, Raheem did compare Josh Freeman to Williams, and Raheem offered a new spin on the “stats are for losers” mentality.

“Josh is much like Doug was when he played for Tampa Bay and in the NFL,” Morris said. “He’s a tough competitor and a great leader who believes that, no matter what, his team is capable of winning.

“That’s the type of quarterback you want leading your team.”

A former defensive back at Hofstra, where he later served as a graduate assistant and secondary coach, Morris is hopeful of the Bucs continuing their “I believe” attitude this season.

“I want our goals to be really more about how we look at things mentally than statistically,” he said.

Joe thinks it great that Raheem headed on up to the middle of nowhere Louisiana to help Williams’ charitable foundation. And Williams heaped high praise on Raheem’s altruism in a recent Shreveport Times story.

In this video from the charity golf tournament associated with the weekend festivities, Bucs fans can catch a look a Raheem’s golf swing and putting style, plus hear Richard Dent give his take on whether Doug Williams should be a Hall of Famer.