Adam Schefter of BSPN.com has come up with a frightening calculation in the wake of Jim Bates being defrocked.

Joe heard this last winter when Jim Bates was hired.

Joe heard this nearly every time the Bucs were brought up on Sirius NFL Radio.

Joe saw it in a CBSSports.com video last week.

“Chris Hovan cannot play in a two-gap system.”

Hovan previously scoffed at such suggestions, even got angry (not at Joe) when Joe asked him about playing two-gap back in the preseason.

But Hovan has finally come clean now that Jim Bates has been defrocked and Raheem the Dream wants to run a Tampa-2 defense full-time. In an interview with the Mad Twitterer in the St. Petersburg Times, Hovan expressed his pleasure at no more two-gap fronts.

“There’s a reason why they call it Tampa 2. Let’s not kid ourselves,” Hovan said. “Everyone has tried to copy it, scheme it. … Am I more comfortable? Yes. I’m not a two-gapper. I’m never going to be a two-gapper. My abilities are to run, penetrate and create at the line of scrimmage. With that being said, some of the guys are comfortable. But at the same time, we’ve got to go out there and just run the defense that is called.”

Joe wonders if this move to change defenses is too little, too late? Perhaps it’s a test for Bucs coaches and scouts to see who is diversified and who isn’t and who may return next season?

Longtime NFL executive Michael Lombardi, now firing shots on NationalFootballPost.com, offered his take on the ugly realities at One Buc Place.

To say Lombardi is left unimpressed by Mark Dominik and Raheem The Dream would be a major understatement, particularly when it comes to the firing of Jim Bates. 

And based on what’s going on in Tampa since the firing of Jon “Love You Bro” Gruden, one would never assume that they know anything about running a professional football team. What’s happening in Tampa right now would even insult the people who play Madden 2009. …

Making a mistake on your offensive coordinator is one thing, but making a mistake in the area of your own expertise shows a lapse in your own knowledge.

Joe recommends the story, but it will turn the stomach of any Bucs-loving human.

In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, several hours before the vast majority of the local MSM typed or spoke one word about the Bucs defrocking defensive coordinator Jim Bates, Joe speculated the move may have been a desperation stunt by either general manager Mark Domink and/or coach Raheem the Dream to secure their own positions with the team.

That’s not to suggest Bates wasn’t worthy of being nuetered.

Anwar Richardson of the Tampa Tribune, twittering on the TBO.com’s Bucs Twitter account, is of the mind that canning Bates may have in fact sealed perhaps both Dominik and Raheem the Dream’s fate with the Bucs.

You got to wonder if Raheem Morris and Mark Dominik can keep their jobs after this season. Too many bad decisions from both.

Richardson has speculated for some weeks that it would be difficult for the Bucs to retain either Dominik or Raheem the Dream — or both — if the Bucs only won one game.

Joe is convinced finances play a large part in this. Joe believes, for several reasons, Raheem the Dream is safe (potentially until a labor agreement is set between the NFL and the NFLPA) and that Dominik will be given more rope than Raheem the Dream.

Tuesday afternoon, WDAE-AM 620 reported that while the Bucs were in the middle of practice, defrocked Bucs defensive coordinator Jim Bates ate at a fast food restaurant.

In this video clip that Joe is embarrassed to link to because it is from a trashy cable outfit that pisses daily in the collective faces of football fans, Bates is confronted in the parking lot of the chain fast food joint by a part-time WDAE on-air personality.

Bates refuses to answer any questions other than to claim he is still employed by the Bucs.

Well. Bates is such a coveted “consultant” to Raheem the Dream, he is either banned from practices at One Buc Palace, or he is free to blow off practices so he can have a cornbread muffin with his fast food meal.

Former Bucs DE Steve White

By STEVE WHITE
JoeBucsFan.com analyst

Steve White spent every season of the Tony Dungy era playing defensive end for the Bucs. He’s spent countless hours in the film room with the likes of Warren Sapp, Rod Marinelli and more. Joe is humbled to now have White, also a published author and blogger, as part of the JoeBucsFan.com team. Today White serves up an Xs and Os look at what could be next for the Bucs defense now that defensive coordinator Jim Bates was fired and Raheem Morris has filled his role. It’s simply a can’t-miss read for the hardcore Bucs fan.

I find no joy in a man losing his job. So this post isn’t about Jim Bates. What it is about is the Bucs defense we will see on Sunday, and I for one am excited.

Yes, I said excited.

I know I will be one of the few people you will hear all week say that. But to the people who are opining negatively about the switch from Bates to Raheem Morris as defensive coordinator, I will say to them what Brad Culpepper said to me one day in our meeting room:

“I know more football than you.”

You might think that an egotistical statement; hell, I don’t really care.

What I do care about is getting the train back on the tracks, and going back to what we normally do on defense is a step in the right direction.

Here are some changes I think Bucs fans should look for on defense on Sunday against the Falcons:

1. Will we have a declared under tackle?

This year, instead of having one guy who always played under tackle in the B-gap, we just kept both tackles on the left or the right and they alternated between being head up on the guard and being an outside shade of the guard in the B-gap. I really think that Chris Hovan is best suited to be the under tackle, and if he can line up in the B-gap he will be able to get consistent push on play action pass on early downs. Ryan Sims is more suited for the nose tackle position, and if we can get him lined up on the center on most plays I think our defense will function better. Roy Miller has shown that he can do both, so he could basically stay in the same rotation.

2. Will we see the return of our under defense?

All of this year we have played an over defense with four defensive linemen on the line and the strong tackle generally being to the tight end side. If we really go back to our old defense, we will mix in some under defense. That means we will put our Sam linebacker, Quincy Black, up on the line to the tight end side. The end to that side would be in the C-gap with an outside shade of the tackle, the tackle to that side would then be in the A gap, the backside tackle is in the B-gap and the backside end in a wide 5.

This defense gives us a lot of options.

On the front side, we are a lot more stout against the run and we have quite a few options to run blitz on early downs (see our old Bark zone blitzes). On the back side, we have our tackle and end in a prime pass rushing position for play action pass. Also, with Black being on the line over the tight end he will get plenty of opportunities to get physical with Tony Gonzales and hopefully hold him up at the line. If nothing else, it will give the Falcons offensive line another front to have to block.

3. Who will be in on the defensive line on 3rd-and-long?

I wrote earlier in the week what should be done with the third-down personnel. I am hoping that they give Miller and Kyle Moore an opportunity to rush inside and leave Jimmy Wilkerson at left end to rush the right tackle.

4. Will we back our corners off the line a bit pre-snap?

One of the hallmarks of Bates’ defense was that our corners would challenge receivers at the line and be active in the run game. The problem has been, of course, that this also leaves us susceptible to the deep ball. I really am hoping that at least at times we get our corners back to about five yards off prenap, so as to take some of the pressure off them when the Falcons try to go over the top in the passing game.

5. Will we get back to blitzing more on first down?

For as much as people simplistically focused on the Tampa 2 when Monte Kiffin was here, he should have had as much credit for the zone blitzes he also called.

Plenty of times we ran zone blitzes in early downs to get teams into 3rd-and-long situations. I remain convinced that if we can get the Falcons in a lot of 3rd-and-longs, we will get off the field on third down. To do that we need to be sending our linebackers early and often on zone blitzes, not only to knock out the run but also to get pressure on Matt Ryan on play action pass.

 Zone blitzes are a relatively safe way to send pressure and still keep coverage downfield fundamentally sound. And again, it’s something we haven’t done all year, so it will be throwing the Falcons a curveball.

Now there is one last thing I want to point out here. We brought back Joe Barry to coach our linebackers this year after being the defensive coordinator for the Lions. He obviously didn’t have a lot of success there but the guy knows Monte’s defense backwards and forwards.

For that reason the transition to what we used to do won’t be especially hard. Combine that with the fact that most of our starters played in that scheme last year, and there are plenty of reasons to be hopeful.

I have said all year that the scheme was not taking advantage of the talent that we do have. I am not saying we will all of a sudden morph into the Baltimore Ravens defense overnight. But what I am saying is that I truly believe that you will see a marked improvement on Sunday.

There are unknowns, of course, like how Coach Morris will gameplan and what kind of calls he will make in crucial situations. But overall, I fully expect statistically and stylistically to see a better product on the field Sunday.

And let me say this in closing, I could obviously be totally wrong. We might go out Sunday and totally lay an egg on defense and look even worse against Atlanta than we did on Sunday against the Saints.

But I have the courage of my convictions and I will be back here next week to take the criticism if I am wrong. To those who are convinced we will suck I just ask, ‘Are you willing to say the same thing?’

In a direct contradiction to Tampa Tribune NFL writer eye-RAH! Kaufman’s comments earlier, Ronde Barber told the St. Pete Times that the Bucs players weren’t working behind the scenes to get Jim Bates fired.

Barber said Bucs players did not lobby Morris to replace Bates or change the defensive scheme.

“I don’t think any players, save a few, knew about this until today,” Barber said. “There wasn’t any player input, it wasn’t a mass revolt against Jim Bates. That’s conjecture and fun to write, but completely false.”

Kaufman said in a radio interview this morning that a “militia unit formed, and that got it done,” referring to some players talking to Raheem The Dream about making a change.

Joe’s not taking sides, but Joe finds it hard to believe Barber and other players weren’t voicing their displeasure to Raheem The Dream. After all, the head coach is a big time player’s coach, and takes great pride in his communication with players.

Whether Raheem The Dream based any of his decision on player input, one could wildly speculate about that all day.

The last time THE PESSIMIST felt the need to write he screamed, “Fire Jim Bates! ” Feel free to read about it.

One month later, Raheem The Dream finally wised up and pulled the trigger. Good job, Rah.

But the praise stops there. THE PESSIMIST has this ugly feeling (similar to Joe’s Rosie O’Donnell reference earlier) that Raheem The Dream and Mark Dominik are serial rebuilders.

These guys have torn down the team not once, but TWICE in a matter of weeks. That’s got to be an NFL record for incompetence.

First it was kicking the veterans to the curb, then their handpicked well paid offensive coordinator, Jeff Jagodzinski. And now it’s their handpicked, well paid defensive coordinator, Jim Bates.

Funny. The one part of this team the Glazer Boys didn’t do on the cheap this year is hire assistant coaches; Jagodzinski, Jim Bates, and Joe Barry were surely paid the going rate for their experience. And now Rah and Dominik have sent them packing.

THE PESSIMIST suspects the Glazers will never spend money like that again.

THE PESSIMIST also is here to tell Raheem The Dream and Dominik that they’re out of mulligans. There are no more do-overs. This is your freaking team. Your heinous stink is all over it.

Entering the 2010 offseason, the easy, cheap and keep-their-jobs way out is for these guys to keep making the Bucs younger. That’ll be the built in excuse.

Don’t be surprised to see the Bucs’ geniuses go offense in the first round of the draft to keep Josh Freeman progressing, which will help save their jobs and buy time —  maybe trade down for a young receiver to replace Antonio Bryant, and another in the second round plus a running back there, too.

For Raheem The Dream, now it’s all about constantly rebuilding. That’s the only thing we know he’s good at.

"Ha. Ha. Ha. Wait til you see what I do next."

Perhaps taking another vacation, Pat “Vacation Man” Yasinskas of BSPN.com gave his first take on the Jim Bates firing this morning at about 10 a.m.

This move opens even more questions about Morris and the direction in which the Bucs are going. In fact, they don’t seem to have much direction at all. They’re making it up on the fly and not sticking to a plan and that approach isn’t going to get them anywhere.

Joe recalls Raheem The Dream saying multiple times at his new-coach press conference that his play was to “Stay the Course.”

Joe is starting to understand what that really meant. It seems “Stay the Course” was, in fact, a plan to completely veer off course to throw everyone off, and then return to Chucky’s playbook and the Tampa 2.

Joe hasn’t seen this much needless motion and misdirection since Chucky had a his offense shifting all over the place on every other play.

A mysterious elbow injury has ended Byron Leftwich’s season. He’s been placed on injured reserve.

Joe’s just bumbed out the NFL isn’t like Major League Baseball. If it were, the Bucs no doubt could have traded Leftwich to the Steelers yesterday for a quality draft pick (although the Glazers might have asked for cash), and Joe suspects Leftwich would magically be healthy.

In conjunction with Leftwich going on IR, the Bucs have signed undrafted rookie quarterback Rudy Carpenter, who played at Arizona State University.

It’s moments like these that has Chucky itching to get back into coaching.

The Tampa Bay market’s lone football Hall of Fame voter and nominator, eye-RAH! Kaufman, of the Tampa Tribune, made it loud and clear that the firing of Jim Bates came from the Bucs locker room.

Speaking this morning on 1040 AM, Kaufman said players “got in [Raheem Morris’] ear” this week to protest Jim Bates’ scheme.

Kaufman said he asked Raheem The Dream on Monday whether he and his coaches were evaluating themselves as to whether they had the right scheme on defense for their players but didn’t get a straight answer.

“I got zero. He gave me nothing. And 12 hours later Bates is history. A lot of players were complaining about that scheme. A couple of players, a militia unit formed, and that got it done,” Kaufman said. “A few guys in the locker room told me off the record it wasn’t the right system that they can’t play in that system.”

Then asked by radio host Nanci Donnellan (aka The Fabulous Sports Babe) whether Ronde Barber led the militia charge he referenced, it was Kaufman who didn’t respond.

If Raheem The Dream is making landmark, franchise-changing decisions with the help of his players in the middle of the season, that’s downright ugly, especially considering the lack of experience on his defense.

These are scary times in Bucs history.

Three jobs ago in Miami, Jim Bates was quite happy, as opposed to the way Raheem The Dream characterized him less than three weeks ago.

Based on a Raheem The Dream quoted uttered just two weeks ago to the Green Bay media via conference call — only reported by Joe — it now stands to reason that Jim Bates quite likely was miserable in his job and may have wanted out.

Here’s what Raheem The Dream had to say about Bates on Nov. 4.

“… We’re implementing his system,” Raheem The Dream said. “We’re getting the players in place that he needs to be successful. And once we have that opportunity to do that, Jim Bates will be feeling pretty good about being here, loving life. And we’re just glad we can work together.”

At that time, Joe noted the odd choice of words that all but said Bates wasn’t happy yet in Tampa. Shouldn’t he have been happy working for an exciting young head coach and general manager?

Joe suspects that Bates’s frustrastion over the talent provided him may have hit a boiling point in recent weeks. 

Perhaps, he and Raheem The Dream were advised the organization would not spend on free agents in March and might even use it’s top draft picks on the offensive side of the ball. 

That could have been enough for Bates to wave the white flag.

The Football Moron of BSPN believes the Falcons might try to run the ball on the Bucs this weekend.

Who could have guessed?

Joe's compiled various quotes that reveal jettisoned defensive coordinator Jim Bates and Raheem The Dream were on different planets with their interpretation of the defense

As Bucs fans wait for what should be a fascinating and manic explanation of the Jim Bates firing by Raheem The Dream, Joe wants to refresh your memory of one of the head coach’s most recent explanations of the defense.

Raheem The Dream’s comments came during a conference call with the New Orleans media last Wednesday, as transcribed by NewOrleans.com. He explained that Monte Kiffin was working toward Bates’s scheme and philosophy.

“The previous regime we worked with we tried to transform it a little bit to this package we’re in right now. We just transformed over to it. There’s not much difference. There’s a lot of the same coverages, little different verbiage, different teachings and some more understanding of different things we may not have talked about before. We have all the stuff we had before. We’ve just added some things we needed to add from before and now we’re just putting it all together. We have a bunch of young guys that have to buy into it and grow into it together and see where we can go.“

Just a couple of days after Raheem The Dream delivered this explanation, Bates contradicted him in comments to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune saying his defense was a complete overhaul.

“The hardest thing has been it’s a total change,” Bates said.

Again, today’s explanation should be fascinating.

If you’d like your head to totally explode, Joe recommends reading these other spoken contradictions about the defense delivered by Bates and Raheem The Dream.

Here’s more insight into the Jim Bates firing you won’t find anywhere else: Joe has dug up the audio of Raheem The Dream giving credit to Bates for the key Quincy Black interception in Miami.

It was 3rd-and-7 for the Dolphins in their own end and Miami was gunning for a first down to potentially close out the game.

Speaking on Total Access, on 620 WDAE-AM, back on Nov. 16, the head coach explained that he was sure Miami would run the ball but Jim Bates was in his ear telling him to expect a pass. So Raheem The Dream admitted he deferred to Bates and the pass coverage.

Dolphins quarterback Chad Henne did, in fact, drop back to throw and Black made the interception and Josh Freeman led the Bucs to a late-game, go-ahead score.

“You know, we actually called a switch, which is the quarters coverage, so [Black] just read the quarterbacks eyes and was able to make a great play,” Raheem The Dream said on Total Access. “Really they tricked the head coach, I’ve got to be honest. I thought, ‘No way. I thought they would tough it out, grind it out.’ And Jim Bates, my defensive coordinator said, “Coach, man they might throw it right here.’ And I said, ‘OK, let’s go with the switch.’ We went with the switch and they threw the football and a great play by Quincy Black … and set us up for what looked like the go-ahead driving score to end the game.”

When first hearing this, Joe found it interesting how involved Morris was in the playcalling. That’s not surprising, especially on a big play, but it’s interesting.

Regardless, now the guy the head coach relied on heavily in Miami is gone.

Look, Joe hates to see anyone lose his job, especially a nice guy like Jim Bates who once upon a time was a damned good defensive coordinator.

Maybe the game passed him by? Who knows?

Joe finds it a little more than curious as to the timing of Bates being “relieved” as defensive coordinator.

While it’s a popular perception that Raheem the Dream was safe for this season, possibly next season and maybe until the NFL and the NFLPA come to a labor peace, no one truly knows what was going through the minds of Bryan and Joel.

There was only one word that Joe can use that is fit for mass public consumption to describe the Bucs defense: rancid, specifically the rush defense. Watching the Bucs try to stop the run against the Saints so turned Joe’s stomach, he imagined this must be what an adult movie starring Rosie O’Donnell would be like.

What Joe finds curious is the timing. Clearly something had to be done. The Bucs defense was beyond a laughing stock and each game the brutal Bucs seemed to set franchise lows for defense.

Given the mostly sorry history of this franchise prior to 1997, the defense — or lack thereof — was more than alarming.

Joe wonders if Raheem — and possibly general manager Mark Dominik — were starting to worry about their own job security and launched Bates, eeerr, “relieved” Bates, in an attempt to save their own jobs?

Not a dumb move if that was the case. Something, anything, had to be done.  

Joe isn’t sure he’s ever seen this before. And it disturbs him.

Never can Joe remember an NFL team launching both its offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator in the same season, much less before Thanksgiving.

But that’s just what Raheem the Dream has done.

This tells Joe that someone over at One Buc Palace royally screwed up last spring and, dare Joe suggest, maybe the Bucs need an executive consultant?

Now Joe doesn’t know exactly who hired Jeff Jagodzinski and/or Jim Bates as the offensive and defensive coordinators, respectively. Whoever did may not want to do any more coaching hires.

Jagodzinski was canned 10 days before the season began and the Bucs’ offense in many ways is still struggling as a result. Bates was simply horrible. Fundamentals? There were none. Whether Bates tried to fit a round peg into a square hole or he couldn’t put his players in the right positions to make plays, Joe isn’t so sure.

Joe, however, is sure of one thing with Bates: Whatever he was doing blew up in his face. As a result, he’s toast and likely so is his career as a defensive coordinator. His last two stops (Tampa Bay and Denver) Bates never finished his first season before he was neutered and/or canned.

So when Bucs historians and fans look back at the yet-to-be completed 2009 campaign, observers can rightly point to the hirings of Bates and Jagodzinski as the points from which the season began circling the drain. 

"You know Mr. Glazer, maybe if we gave Chris Hovan some more facepaint to use, he could have played the two-gap system better? I dunno."

Let this be known as the second time in the history of JoeBucsFan.com that Joe has linked to a John Romano column.

The columnist for the St. Petersburg Times came out firing last night (Joe was awake when the column was posted) at the Bucs hierarchy, namely general manager Mark Dominik and coach Raheem the Dream as the problem with the Bucs, not deposed defensive coordinator Jim Bates.

Romano even dares to suggest that the move to demote Bates smacks of hypocrisy.

Have Morris and Dominik done better in their jobs than Bates did in his?

Even if you say the problem with Bates was more philosophy than performance, the hiring was still a mistake. You don’t hand a guy a roster that was built for the Tampa 2, and then tell him he’s free to run a completely different scheme. And then have the audacity to blame him when it doesn’t work.

The issue today is credibility. Because of their youth and inexperience, Dominik and Morris started with very little. And 10 months later, they have even less.

Whoa!

As readers will notice later this morning, Joe too finds the timing of the move a bit curious if not a desperate move. While two coordinators never making it past Thanksgiving is bad, at least Dominik and Raheem the Dream had the common sense to cut their losses and get rid of both Bates and previously, offensive coordinator Jeff Jagodzinski.

The too-long nightmare of Bucs fans has come to an end.

Disgusted with how the Bucs rush defense — dead last in the NFL — was getting lit up game after game after game and seeing zero improvement since the season began, Bucs coach Raheem Morris and general manager Mark Dominik decided to “relieve” defensive coordinator Jim Bates of his duties, so reports the Mad Twitterer Rick Stroud of the St. Petersburg Times.

Bates, 63, will remain with the team at least through the end of the season in a consulting role, breaking down film and helping Morris on game day from the coaching box.

Morris is expected to immediately return the Bucs’ to their Tampa Two scheme, which will allow their undersized defensive linemen to take advantage of their quickness rather than penalize them for a lack of size.

Morris and general manager Mark Dominik met until late Monday to discuss the organizational shift, one day after the Bucs were routed by the unbeaten New Orleans Saints 38-7, one of the worst home defeats in club history.

Joe has been clamoring for this for the past few weeks. Long before the season began, NFL people with far more knowledge of football than Joe, including Warren Sapp and Pat Kirwan, banged the drum long and loud that Jim Bates’s system would not work with the personel he had.

Kirwan and Sapp’s words proved to be prophetic. As the stylish “Backwards Hat,” aka Rick Brown of the Lakeland Ledger pointed out, the Bucs were putrid beyond words against the run and there was no hope in sight of them getting any better.

The Bucs have held a team to fewer than 100 yards just once this year. That was the Philadelphia game, when the Eagles passed their way to a 33-14 victory.

The past three weeks have been the worst for the Bucs. Green Bay, Miami and New Orleans averaged 184 yards on the ground.

As Joe noted several times, if Warren Sapp knew this wouldn’t work, if Pat Kirwan knew this wouldn’t work, if Joe could see it was a freaking disaster, how come Bates couldn’t?