Not one to buy into the “stats are for losers” line, Joe’s got a telling number to report. The Bucs lead the NFL in forcing opponents into poor field position after a kickoff.

The average start against the Bucs following a kickoff is the 16.8 yard line. Departed Rich Bisaccia’s Chargers rank 31st (29.4). The Detroit Lions, where Maurice Stovall is covering kicks, including a missed tackle on Sammie Stroughter’s long return on opening day, are 28th (25.4).

Big money kickoff specialist Michael Koenan is paying off. And so far the Bucs’ special teams have been nearly flawless in all phases. Special teams coordinator Dwayne Stukes deserves a standing ovation.

More room to work is a blessing for a very young defense.

"I still hate Sean Jones, but I love Ronde."

Nickname-happy Raheem Morris brought us “The Wolfs” last week. (No. Not wolves. Wolfs.)

And now, channeling Muhammed Ali and/or perhaps a twisted memory of Sabby Piscitelli, Raheem has bestowed a new nickname upon Ronde Barber.

Around One Buc Palace, Raheem says Ronde Barber is known as “The G.O.A.T.” Speaking on The Raheem Morris Show last night on WDAE-AM 620, Raheem explained that Barber’s nickname stands for Greatest Of All Time.

Joe has to tip his cap to the head coach. Raheem The Dream is pretty darn good at this nickname stuff.

Beating up a quarterback from the very beginning and a smothering rush defense is a winning formula in the NFL.

How did the Bucs beat the Dixie Chicks Sunday? Simple: defense.

The Bucs entered the game with the 31st ranked rush defense in the league. They played like the No. 1 ranked.

Consider that Michael Turner only racked up 30 is no less than remarkable.

But following the game, it wasn’t so much the Bucs bragging about stopping Turner — the inference was there — but how the defense didn’t twiddle its collective thumbs for 30 minutes only to realize they were in a regular season game.

No, the defense came out pounding the Dixie Chicks and specifically Matt Ice. Joe is confident the pounding Matty Ice took he will not soon forget.

That is directly because the Bucs took it to the Dixie Chicks from the first play of scrimmage.

“The past two weeks, we came out and started slow,” inside linebacker Mason Foster said. “This time we were ready to go and we were on top of everything, playing hard, fired up for the entire game and I think it showed.”

There was no doubt for Dekoda Watson what the difference in the game was: the quick start by the defense.

“I think we came out pretty strong in the first half and that was the biggest thing,” Watson said. “We came out firing. That is how we should play every week. I feel like the defense was fired up all game and that’s what we need.”

Safety Corey Lynch agreed.

“We were ready to go right from the very beginning,” Lynch said.

Even though he has just three games under his belt, even rookie defensive end Adrian Clayborn knew sleepwalking through the first half of games is playing with fire.

“Coming out [down] 17-0 [like the Bucs did in Minnesota a week ago], that’s not what we want,” Clayborn said. “That will bite us in the butt. We wanted to come out strong and let the defense grow.”

Joe has no clue how an NFL defense can start a game not motivated or ready to rock and roll, especially the season opener. But it’s a good thing Bucs coach Raheem Morris recognized this and has corrected the problem.

Nothing takes the will away from an opponent quicker than getting punched in the mouth on the first snap.

Gerald McCoy and the Bucs defense putting heat on Matty Ice was a big reason the Bucs finally snapped the Dixie Chicks win streak.

Joe was as giddy as the next guy that the Bucs took down the Dixie Chicks, finally, Sunday night. The reason is simple: defense.

To read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the crying has consumed Atlanta (combined with the Braves swallowing the tailpipe as well). It’s not bad enough that the Dixie Chicks lost. It’s not bad enough that Matty Ice got beaten to a pulp . It’s that these actions came at the hands of the Bucs, documents Mark Bradley.

The Falcons spent three quarters letting an OK Tampa Bay team get ahead and stay there, and it wasn’t as if the Bucs seized every moment. They netted three points from two sacks-and-recovered-fumbles inside the Falcons’ 20. They had a chance to pull ahead by three scores but threw an interception on the first play of the fourth quarter, whereupon a mystery guest appeared.

Yet is is this same “OK” Bucs team that had the Dixie Chicks on the ropes at the GeorgiaDome last year but couldn’t convert a fourth-and-one for a first down inside the five in the waning minutes of the game. Yet it’s this same “OK” Tampa Bay squad which forgot how to tackle against the Dixie Chicks on a kickoff, thereby letting them back in the game.

So which is is? Are the Bucs better than OK? Or is it simply that the Dixie Chicks aren’t Super Bowl-ready?

Joe has yet to watch the full report from WTSP-TV, Ch. 10, but this video gives you an idea what you’ll see on 10 News tonight at 11.

"You see that touchdown pass to Mike Williams, Jaws? That's Greg Olson takin' one right out of my old fuc*n playbook. Did I mention Tampa's running my plays? Earnest Graham will tell you. We called that Z-major cannon gully white zip-tie x-box roger nickel doosh zizz. Olson calls it 94Z, but it's the same damn play."

Everyone’s fired up to see the Bucs next week on Monday Night Football.

Why Joe’s even heard of fans running out to Best Buy to buy screen cleaner to catch every inch of the game online.

The excitement of the national stage isn’t lost on Raheem Morris, Ronde Barber and Donald Penn.

Barber on Monday night being special: It absolutely is. It’s the only game in town that day. It’s a big game. You know everybody’s watching. You get all day to sit around and think about it. You know what else has happened on every other game across the schedule. … You gotta treat it like every other game. You can’t treat it like something special. And that’ll be my message to the young guys.

Penn on Monday night: It’s the ultimate high. You’ve got to be ready for the moment, man. You’ve got to grasp that moment. Everybody in the world is going to be watching. You gotta grasp that moment. That’s the game you love to play in. That’s the games you love to play in. It’s a big difference. A lot of people don’t know about Buc football. We’re going to try and show them next week. I’ll be hear to answer questions from the younger guys.  We haven’t done well on Monday night, so hopefully we can turn that around. 

Raheem on his old boss in the house: You love the stage. Yeah it matters, man. You’re the one team playing and everybody else is watching. We end early on Mondays so we can watch Monday Night Football. We got Jon Gruden coming back to town. We got the old boss comin’ to town, man, we gotta have have a good showing. He’s watching me. He’ll be up in that box. I gotta make him proud. Monday Night Football is huge. It’s big. It always has been.

Joe wrote about Cody Grimm’s injury last night, but the latest update today from Raheem Morris sounds ominous.

“We don’t know the extent of that yet,” Morris said, referring to Grimm tearing his ACL and being out for the season. “He’s definitely getting an MRI. I know his MCL is messed up, and he’s got some other stuff that we’re checking on right now. So it may not be for the year. We’re not sure of that yet.”

Regardless, this is a huge loss for the Bucs, especially in the revived run defense. Raheem said he was the “lead dog down in the box” yesterday.

“It’ll be a battle this week” between Larry Asante and Corey Lynch to start at free safety,” Raheem said. The head coach explained that Asante has been inactive because of the special teams prowess of Devin Holland.

So it’ll be next man up for the Bucs. Joe’s counting his blessings that the next man up isn’t a safety currently playing for the Chiefs.

Brian Weber, Willie McGinest and Erik Kramer of FoxSports.com discuss the Bucs win over the Dixie Chicks Sunday.

<a href="http://msn.foxsports.com/video?vid=dd69572f-234e-473c-b464-7c6d49076a47" target="_new" title="">Online OT: ATL/TB</a>

Finally, LeGarrette Blount got his touches yesterday, but for Joe it could have been a lot more, especially on first down.

Leading 16-3 entering the fourth quarter, immediately after Blount dragged tacklers for an eight-yard run on first down and moved the chains with a four-yard run to the Atlanta 44 yard line, Josh Freeman came out of the quarter break and thew an interception downfield. Why not keep pounding Blount, eating clock and driving to make it a three-score lead?

Then the Bucs get the ball back still leading 16-13 and hand it off on first down to Earnest Graham?

Atlanta then scores a touchdown on a two-play drive and the Bucs respond throwing on first down in a drive in which Blount never saw the ball.

Thankfully, Roddy White went on to drop balls, the Bucs defense held tough and Blount was given the rock in the final drive.

Joe’s not sure what Greg Olson was thinking, especially considering Josh Freeman wasn’t playing his best game.

There goes the rockstar general manager Mark Dominik adding to his legacy again.

Sure, Adrian Clayborn was a first-round pick and is supposed to flash some greatness like he did yesterday, but late third-round pick Mason Foster is calling the defense making a massive impact, and late fourth-round pick Luke Stocker is proving he’s the real deal.

If John Gilmore was the Bucs’ blocking tight end last year, Stocker is a serious upgrade in that area. It’s all there on tape. And Stocker, despite the ugly drop on opening day, has shown he’s got some hands.

Speaking this morning on WDAE-AM 620, Bucs tight ends coach Alfredo Roberts said Stocker is a future captain of the Bucs.

“[Stocker] accepts the process. He understands and he gets it,” Roberts said. “He’s one of those guys that you can tell him once and he’ll go out and he gives you good information if things go good or bad. He’ll tell you exactly how it’s going. He understands he has a ways to grow as a pro. We like a lot of things about the young man’s character. I think he’s going to be a great leader and a captain for this football team before his time is done. Him and Kellen began with a good to great friendship, a healthy respect of the game. Kellen takes him under his wing and shows him and teaches him and they watch film together. It’s great to see him take coaching from coach and [veteran] player.”

For the Bucs to have rookies making a serious impact against a permier opponent in Week 3 of the season is an extraordinary sign of things to come.

It was almost too predictable for Joe.

When Roddy White proved more than a handful for E.J. Biggers, when a rookie racked up over 100 yards receiving on Aqib Talib, when safety Cody Grimm went down with a knee injury, Bucs fans on this very site were jumping up and down about the imminent return of suspended Bucs safety Tanard Jackson.

Hold up!

As Stephen Holder of the St. Petersburg Times documented last week, Jackson’s return to the Bucs is hardly imminent.

For starters, do not assume Jackson will automatically be back on the Bucs’ roster on Thursday, for several reasons. The biggest of these is that the Bucs don’t have any control over this situation. Jackson must apply for reinstatement and that request will be granted only when Goodell deems it appropriate. There are conditions associated with players’ suspensions, and unless those conditions are met, he is not reinstated. And the substance-abuse policy does not specify when Goodell must make a decision. Because details are confidential, there’s no way to know whether Jackson has been in compliance.

Jackson’s sentence expired last week but that does not mean he is automatically eligible to return to the Bucs. It all lies in the hands of NFL warden commissioner Roger Goodell.

Now don’t go fingering Goodell as some Bucs fans have tried. Jackson put himself in this position and no one but Jackson himself is responsible for his predicament. Goodell didn’t fire up the bong and pass it to Jackson (allegedly).

So let Joe play Devil’s Advocate: Let’s say Jackson is indeed reinstated this morning. The dude is hardly in football playing shape. Shoot, after the first week of training camp, Raheem Morris wouldn’t even let his players participate in an Oklahoma drill at the open practice at the stadium because the players hadn’t practiced at all since the previous season (sans a few workouts with Josh Freeman).

So how on earth could anyone expect Jackson to be in NFL playing shape after five practices, after a year away from the game? That’s crazy talk.

No, Jackson will not be starting for the Bucs when they host the Colts on Monday Night Football. Anyone thinking that, Joe will just quote the great Mike North.

“Slow down!”

Jim Basquil and Eric Allen of BSPN take a look at the Bucs win over the Dixie Chicks.

There was talk before today’s flushing of the Falcons about how the Bucs’ defensive line would have a solid pass rush if only they could force third-and-long situations.

Those were absent against Detroit, plus Matthew Stafford was taking short drops and releasing the ball quickly. Then in Minnesota, the Bucs got gashed against the run, and fell behind quickly.

So in many respects, today, with a pocket passer in Matt Ryan, was the first good look at the Bucs’ pass rush.

And it showed up.

Gerald McCoy and Brian Price definitely disrupted up the gut, and Adrian Clayborn and Dakoda Watson had sacks off the edge. Regardless, there was a reasonably consistent rush, which seemed to be absent for years.

After the game, Joe asked Aqib Talib whether he could feel the pass rush as he chased Julio Jones.

“Definitely. We’re on that line playing man, man. A lot of times, by the time Julio got out of his route, Matt Ryan was already retreating, throwing the ball away, or on his back or whatever,” Talib said. “We definitely felt like there was a little spark on our d-line today.”

With the crowd roaring at raucous levels on 2nd-and-long and 3rd-and-long today, and the Bucs pinning their ears back, Joe really felt a flashback to the glory days, especially under the lights.

Joe’s not about to compare the teams, but the feeling was there.

The Bucs defense came out possessed today and Joe was both impressed, and excited.

Part of that was the play of linebacker Dekoda Watson, who made his first start in place of the injured Quincy Black.

Watson made an impact right away when he hurried Matty Ice into a bad pass.

But Watson was less than thrilled with his play when Joe caught up to him after the game.

“Personally, I felt like I can do better,” Watson said. “There is always room for improvement. I felt like there were plays that I could make.

“You don’t want to just get heat on the quarterback. You want to get him down and help out the DBs. But, hey, the final outcome, a win is a win. We have to come back and be prepared for next week.

Atlanta “has a good offensive line and Matt Ryan is a smart player. He makes plays. We respect him a lot. At the same time, we have to make plays.

“I think we came out pretty strong in the first half and that was the biggest thing. We were firing and that shows it should be the way we should come out each week.”

After consecutive games facing Kyle Vanden Bosch, Jared Allen and John Abraham, Donald Penn still has Joe’s vote for the Pro Bowl.

Penn said today’s effort against the Falcons and Abraham was his best of the season. And Penn gave some credit to Josh Freeman and Jeremy Zuttah.

“I didn’t give up a sack. It seems like in the other two [games] I gave up a sack. As a lineman, if you give up one sack, it really, really crushes your whole game,” Penn said. “You could have a perfect game and that one sack stands out.

“I’m just working, man, working to get better. Josh Freeman’s helping me out a lot. You know, stepping up, moving around the pocket making me look good. Jeremy Zuttah helped me out a lot. Anytime Abraham peeked inside he was there. Then I won my one-on-one battles. You know, he got close a couple of times; he’s a great athlete, man. I just got lucky. Hopefully I can keep it going.”

For Joe, the offensive line has earned its fat paychecks over the past six quarters.

Joe was geeked when the Bucs drafted Adrian Clayborn in the first round in this spring’s draft. Sooner or later, Joe knew Clayborn would make a major impact.

That came today. With the Falcons deep in their own territory late in the first half, Matty Ice went back to pass and Joe believes Ryan will well remember what happened to him for years to come.

Clayborn bolted through the line, Dixie Chicks left tackle Sam Baker tried to lure Clayborn outside but instead, Clayborn went inside.

“My instincts took over,” Clayborn later said.

So did his physical tools.

Clayborn simply crushed Ryan. Matty Ice was parallel to the ground Clayborn hit him so hard. But Clayborn not only crushed him, he literally ragdolled Matty Ice to the ground, causing a fumble which led to a Bucs field goal.

It was Clayborn’s first sack of his young NFL career.

“I just reacted to the block they gave me,” Clayborn said. “They jumped one side, I took it to the other side and good thing Ryan was right there.”

Good things the Bucs got Clayborn.

Three games into the season it’s clear Josh Freeman isn’t the same near-perfect quarterback he was last year.

Maybe it was too much too expect of Freeman to repeat the six-interception season he turned in for 2010, but Freeman’s now sitting with four interceptions and some poor decision-making over the first three games of 2011. Freeman’s opening-drive pick today was horribly ugly, thrown too low and too short into traffic in the back of the end zone. For Joe, his penalty for near the endzone for throwing beyond the line of scrimmage was indicative of his head just not being as sharp as Bucs have come to expect.

“That’s what the quarterback did today. He found a way to win without playing great football,” Raheem Morris said after the game. Freeman finished 22-for-32 for 180 yards and two interceptions.

Don’t get Joe wrong. Freeman is a great player, and there’s no reason not to expect greatness from the guy. Frankly, Joe’s impressed that the Bucs beat down the Falcons without heroics from No. 5.

Whatever it is with Freeman, Joe’s still confident he’ll shrug it off and get back to his 2010 form.

Earnest Graham offered Joe some insight after today’s win against the Dixie Chicks. Graham talks about the meaning of it all, physical football and more.

JoeBucsFan.com: You’ve been around here a long time. There’s been a lot made that the Bucs needed this kind of signature win. Do think that really makes a difference. Do you feel like there’s a hump that the team got over today?

Earnest Graham: Yeah, I mean you have to admit it. You know what I’m saying. It’s definitely a hump we got over. Was it a win that defines us? No. It’s another game toward what our goal is, to win our division because we came up short last year. Yeah, it’s great to have it, but we dropped quite a few to them in past years, so to come out and get this is big for us because it’s part of our goal.

Joe: What was the difference today?

Graham: We were without a doubt physical. The way we ran the ball, the way LeGarrette Blount ran the ball. You know, converting on third down, the defense, we started fast. We had a lot of growth the last two or three weeks, even though we dropped the first game. Everybody reacted a certain way last week and we learned from that, came back and had a strong second half. Today we played 60 minutes of football but we have to continue growing.

Joe: Josh Freeman was nearly perfect last year in a lot of ways, but this year he’s had his share of picks and poor decisions. He’s a leader, but is there anyone who can talk to him and pump him up after a bad play?

Graham: He’s self motivated. That’s the type of guy that Free is. He’s a free-spirited guy. You know, when things happen, he can shrug them off and come out and continue to lead the team. So he’s a self-motivated guy. Except for immedately after a turnover saying ‘C’mon, let’s get going,’ it’s not something that you have to beat a dead horse on.

Bucs backup safety Corey Lynch is used to making big plays on special teams but it was his batted down pass from Matt Ryan that was aimed for Jacquizz Rodgers that all but sealed the win for the Bucs when the Dixie Chicks were driving to what appeared to be a go-ahead score.

Lynch described to Joe after the game how the play went down.

Rodgers “came off the line and bum rushed me and when he did that, at that time, I knew they were coming inside,” Lynch said. Running backs don’t usually run fades, so I got inside leverage and batted it down.

“You just see their tendencies through their film, but you are talking about Matt Ryan here, nothing is a giveaway. It was great to stand up for that long.

“The Falcons series has been that kind of a series. We had two games last year where we were on the one-yard line late and then here, we had a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter. It’s been that kind of a series but we came out on top today and it’s a great feeling to come out on top.

“We were ready to go right from the beginning. I was proud of all the guys today.”