Dallas Clark has been a big part of the Bucs passing game the past month.

In recent years, the tight end position was too much of a target for the Bucs and quarterback Josh Freeman. With selfish Kellen Winslow always barking for the ball, Freeman telegraphed passes to him on virtually every other pass play worse than Samuel Morse.

This became a problem for several reasons. One, the zebras were always looking for Winslow to push off with his fading skills and, sometimes, there were phantom calls. Second, Freeman was forcing passes to Winslow when he was double-covered if not triple-covered.

Third, Joe remembers Bucs rock star general manager Mark Dominik saying in Greg Schiano’s interview with Dominik and Team Glazer the very first words out of the coach’s mouth were that Freeman was forcing way too many passes to Winslow.

If a college coach could see this, so to did the most inept of defensive coordinators.

So when Winslow was jettisoned, Freeman all but was forced to wean himself from throwing to the tight end. But that has changed recently, so writes Nathan Jahnke of ProFootballFocus.com.

Over the past four weeks, the Buccaneers have worked on making the tight end a bigger part of their offense. Over the first nine games the Tampa Bay tight ends averaged 3.9 targets per game, but over the past four that has increased to 7.8. In fact, 46% of Dallas Clark’s targets and 53.8% of Luke Stocker’s targets have come in the past four weeks.

Now this is good and this is bad. The good comes in when Clark is targeted. In recent weeks, Clark has shown he still has the goods to be an effective receiver. The bad is Stocker. Now Joe has nothing against Stocker in any way shape or form. It just seems as if Stocker will always struggle to be an average tight end. He has a bad case of the dropsies at the very wrong times (is there a right time to have the dropsies?) and seems to be more of a blocker than a receiver.

Joe wouldn’t be surprised if the Bucs go after a tight end with, oh, say their third-round pick in April.

Joe has a hunch just about every Bucs fan knows what position Dominik will draft with his first round pick.

Saints interim coach Joe Vitt suggests his team look to the Bucs as a model team that has adjusted in the face of adversity.

Even with all the drama of bountygate, which bored Joe about three hours after the furor started last offseason, Joe was certain the Saints would make a run at the Super Bowl.

With all the weapons Drew Brees has, how could they not be a contender? Well, they have become a has-been, out of the playoffs even as December approached.

Saints interim coach Joe Vitt won’t put up with any excuse-making for his Saints and gave the Tampa Bay pen and mic club an earful yesterday when it was suggested all the bountygate nonsense doomed the club.

Vitt went on a wonderful rant and invoked the Bucs as a standard for his team to look up to in adversity.

“You are right; I’m not going to make excuses. We have to play the hand we are dealt. We have known since April exactly what the hand is, hey listen, we had a tough offseason. Drew’s not in training camp, Sean is not here. The early suspension of myself and Mickey [Loomis], it was one of those years.

“You guys know this as much as I do; you have been around a while. If you lean on excuses for failure, you are not long for this league. This league is what you have done for me lately. The fact of the matter is we are not protecting the ball like we need to protect the ball. We are not taking away big plays on defense like we need to take big plays away on defense right now.

“Instead of worrying about the things that you can’t control, you better start worrying about the things you can control and you better protect the football and better stop giving up big plays on defense. And we better start doing a better job on our coverage units. At the end of the day, listen, these excuses will not come into effect but we will be held accountable. No one is getting a mulligan around here including myself. I have to do a better job and I will be held accountable.

“Hey, we are getting ready to play an improved football team this week in Tampa Bay. They run the ball well. They play great run defense. They are doing a great job of protecting their young quarterback. Nobody is giving Tampa Bay a mulligan for losing a couple of starters on their offensive line. Listen, it is what it is.”

The way Joe sees this game, the Bucs must run the ball at the Saints. Given the Saints less than stout rush defense, this is tailor-made for a big game from the Muscle Hamster. Huge day.

And when the Bucs run the ball, that means Drew Brees isn’t slicing up the Bucs’ embattled secondary.

From Preston Parker in preseason, to Michael Smith on opening day, to Arrelious Benn (remember him?) to LeQuan Lewis, and Tiquan Underwood last week, it’s been a long and subpar season of returning kicks for the Bucs.

Today, Greg Schiano said Underwood will be the guy on Sunday after not much to judge against the Eagles. Underwood’s best effort was a return to the Eagles’ 23 yard line from deep in the end zone.

This isn’t very exciting news, but it does all but ensure that Smith will again captain the inactive list.

Joe was just fine with then-suspended Aqib Talib getting shipped to the Patriots at the trading deadline — even if Shaun King says that meant the Bucs quit on the 2012 season.

But given how desperate the Bucs are at cornerback, and how much crappy cornerback play has kept the Bucs from a winning record, and how tight Greg Schiano and Bill Belichick are, it’s interesting to note Talib’s impact since arriving in New England.

Boston Herald Pats beat writer Jeff Howe dove into the Talib effect in a feature yesterday that focused on Bill Belichick ditching his normal philosophy in order to have Talib shadow Texans receiver Andre Johnson on Monday night.

“The 6-foot-3, 230-pound Johnson still caught four passes for 58 yards while the 6-1, 205-pound Talib was in the game, so it wasn’t close to perfect. But it was about the Patriots’ attitude and aggressiveness, pitting a veteran on a veteran and protecting a 5-10, 200-pound rookie from a difficult matchup. …

“I thought Aqib did a good job,” Belichick said. “I think he’s done a good job for us. He works hard. I really like him. I like the way he prepares. I like the way he competes.

“As far as the (one-on-one) matchups go, we’ve done that from time to time. It depends on what the matchups are, what the game plan is. We can do it or we cannot do it. I don’t think it’s that big of a thing.”

Again, Joe was on board with the Talib trade. It was a sound move. Talib absolutely could not be counted on. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not stomach-churning painful to wonder what Sunday’s outcome against the Eagles would have been if Talib was wearing red.

Count on Josh Freeman being a Buccaneer for many more years, says former Bucs quarterback Shaun King, who now works as an NFL analyst on NBC Sports Network.

One of only three Bucs quarterbacks to lead the team to the NFC Championship, King said on WDAE-AM today that Freeman will score a huge contract extension but played himself out of elite quarterback money with his inconsistency this season.

“He’s placed himself into a more Matt Schaub, Matt Cassel type of a deal,” King said.  

Per BSPN, Schaub signed a four-year contract extension a few months ago with $62 million over four years with $24.7 million guaranteed. In 2009, Cassel robbed the Chiefs for $40.5 millon over the first three years off his deal. Cassel has no more guaranteed money remaining and is expected to be released in 2013.

Joe has no clue how the Bucs will approach Freeman. Rather than extend his contract this offseason, the Bucs could very easily let Freeman play out his final year in 2013, and then either sign him then to a long term deal, or slap him with the franchise tag for the 2014 season.

What Joe is sure of is that Freeman will have a brutally miserable and high-pressure offseason if the Bucs can’t muster one win over these last three games.

Short of sounding like a cranky old man without his morning caffeine waiting for a plane to take off from Tampa International for a cold business trip to the Midwest, one thing Joe misses about the new, homogenized NFL under the watch of warden commissioner Roger Goodell is how the game is going the way of seven-on-seven, summer-league flag football.

The very essence of the game, punishing physicality, Goodell is doing his best to legislate out of the sport.

If Joe — and millions of football fans — wanted to watch ballet, we’d already be at the Straz Center for Performing Arts.

One glaring thing Joe has noticed is Bucs corners let opposing wide receivers run free as an Alaskan antelope from the snap of the ball. Joe so misses the Mel Blount-style of defense that leveled receivers at the line, thus all but rendering them useless for a play.

This very topic has bubbled to the surface in a TBO.com Bucs Q&A.

Q: According to the rules, a cornerback has 5 yards to disrupt the receiver’s rhythm when beginning their route. A CB also can line up 1 yard off the line of scrimmage. Why is it that the Bucs’ corners basically stand close enough to the receiver that they can know what toothpaste he uses, then at the snap of the ball, they open up their hips and let the receiver go? Every receiver gets into his pattern uninterrupted by Bucs corners. Look at the teams with high sack totals. Their corners are basically inside the receiver’s jersey up till and sometimes past the 5-yard mark. Even more annoying, the Bucs corners try to run with the receivers and keep getting torched. If they can’t keep up with the receivers by just running with them, why would they not try and disrupt them? Pass defense is a mixture of pressure up front and coverage on the backside. The guys up front have no shot at getting to the QB, when the corners are taught not to engage the receiver. You can’t play Cover/Tampa 2 if you don’t re-route/disrupt the receiver. It’s a joke when I hear how the Bucs are thin at corner, without Aqib Talib and Eric Wright. They were at their worst when the two played together (Giants game, anyone?) And to think, the Bucs told Jonathan Joseph they weren’t interested in his services. Wow.

— Sean, Cherry Hill, N.J.

A: Everything depends on the particular coverage that’s chosen for each individual play. The corners will sometimes play tight to the line to give the impression they’re playing man but then back off into a zone. The Bucs use a lot of mixed coverages and in a lot of those cases the corner’s job is to release or let the safeties take over after a few yards. That’s done to protect against a run. I agree that the Bucs would probably help their pass rushers by playing a little more physical, but with the current group’s inexperience and lack of elite size, that may be asking too much of them right now. Something else to consider right now is the fact that the Bucs biggest objective at this point in the secondary is to keep the play in front of them. That’s how you eliminate the big plays and they have cut down on those in recent weeks.

— Woody Cummings

Look, the Bucs secondary is as wretched as wretched can be right now. Why the heck doesn’t Bill Sheridan and Ron Cooper, Bucs defensive coordinator and defensive backs coaches, respectively, try this method?

Better yet: Why the hell hasn’t this been done before now? Joe would hope Sheridan and/or Cooper are at their wits’ end trying anything to help an embattled secondary.

Why not jam the receivers at the line? Then again, the more Joe thinks of this, why in the world wasn’t this done, uh, Joe doesn’t know, three months ago rather than waiting until the team is out of the playoff hunt?

Yeah, believe it or not, Joe went to a Catholic grade school growing up, and that’s where his (nightmarish) experiences with sadistic priests and old nuns getting their sexual tensions released with pointers, fists, et al, came to an end.

Fortunately for Joe, he avoided having to learn Latin, since this was the post-Vatican II era. But Joe’s old man was not as fortunate. He had to take Latin through his college days. The language to Joe’s old man was far more an irritant than Sabby the Goat was for Joe.

Joe brings this up because Joe may have stumbled upon the true meaning of Doug Martin’s moniker, “The Muscle Hamster.” It could mean punishing, or running over defenders.

That’s the hint Joe got from Saints interim head coach Joe Vitt yesterday during a conference call with the Tampa Bay pen and mic club. Vitt was extolling the virtues of Martin when he dropped this gem:

“I told our football team this morning, ‘I haven’t seen a back run over as many people as this back. I mean, he is dropping linebackers and defensive linemen like third period Latin’,” Vitt said.

So Joe believes, based on this information, it would be fair to say that Martin’s mission statement is EGO mos run vos super.

(This means “I will run you over.”)

It’s been just over two years since Gerald McCoy explained that the big D-line coach in the sky directly guided him to two sacks against the Baltimore Ravens.

And now, after his most recent two-sack game against the Eagles on Sunday, McCoy again explained that God drove his stellar performance. A fan to McCoy’s radio show tonight asked him what inspired arguably his career best Sunday.

“We were in chapel the night before. We were challenged by our chaplain. He asked us the question, and he said, ‘Who do you play for? What do you play for?'” McCoy said. “And he told us, he said, ‘The bible says in everything you do, do it wholeheartedly, as if you’re doing it unto the Lord.”

McCoy continued: “So he challenged us, regardless of the outcome of the games from here on out. What would our record be in the wins and losses column when it comes to competin’ for the Lord? And he said, ‘Tomorrow, I’m issuing a challenge to see who could come out with a W,’ and that was just my motivation.”

Jimminy Christmas, McCoy should just hire a sideline preacher to keep him focused in between series. Joe’s not even kidding. Joe often got all fired up for football and life as a kid on Sunday morning’s watching televangelist Jimmy Swaggart get after it on the airwaves, before various hooker scandals took him down.

Joe’s got plenty of respect for men of faith like McCoy. If McCoy can benefit from in-game sermons, it’s worth making it happen.

The leader of the New Schiano Order was exceptionally fired up during the 30-minute window given to media to watch the beginning of practice today.

Bucs beat reporter Tom Krasniqi, of WDAE-AM 620, Twittered out the news.

@TKras – Greg Schiano gathered the entire team around and delivered a pep talk before #Bucs practice, saying “If you wanna be elite, work elite” … Schiano to his team: “Let’s focus on our job today, nothing else…100% focus” … The first portion of practice was spirited and Schiano was hands-on, going from group to group, barking orders. He’s intense today

Joe’s not surprised Schiano is bringing extra juice. His team’s on a three-game losing streak and just came out slow for the first time this season.

Joe’s really looking to see how the Bucs respond Sunday. They desperately need to avoid a complete December collapse that has plagued the team two of the past four years.

Schiano said after practice he expects his players to be as disgusted as he is and ready to dig in — perhaps harder than ever — to right the subpar play of last Sunday.

“If you’re not sick, then there’s a problem,” Schiano said, referring to what should be the mentality of all Buccaneers.

An astute JoeBucsFan reader has pointed out that Warren Sapp appears to be wearing his Super Bowl ring in this Lakeland Ledger photo from Sunday’s Bucs-Eagles game. The game celebrated the 10-year reunion of the Bucs’ 2002 Super Bowl champs, and a large percentage of players were flashing their coveted bling.

This is only interesting because Sapp reported the ring lost to Florida courts as part of his high-profile bankruptcy filings.

Of course, Sapp could have had a replica ring made. Or perhaps the real one just turned up under a couch cushion.

The Bucs lost on the final play Sunday, on a ball snapped with two seconds remaining. So it’s natural for fans to obsess about specific plays, from the Bucs botching their first handoff of the day, to cornerback Danny Gorrer’s dropped interception with seconds left, to Greg Schiano’s controversial punt plan on 3rd-and-8 with 2:55 to go.

But Joe also is wondering about how the young Bucs may have been shaken by the wild pregame atmosphere surounding the reunion of the 2002 Super Bowl champs, especially after Mike Williams’ comments on his WDAE-AM 620 radio show Monday.

“It was a crazy atmosphere. You wanted to get their autograph, or you was like, ‘Dang, do I get ready for the game, or [laughs], and them guys walking around. But it was like, I don’t know, like Ronde said, ‘a playoff atmosphere,'” Williams said.

Joe finds it hard to believe that it was merely coincidence that the Bucs’ first true slow start under the New Schiano Order, including preseason games, came down Sunday.

There’s no excuse, if Buccaneers players were distracted by Warren Sapp and other icons yucking it up with them that morning. Joe wonders whether this was a detail the planning-obsessed New Schiano Order had prepped to counter.

Consistent, versatile defensive linemen are worth their weight in gold in the NFL. It’s why Bucs rock star general manager Mark Dominik has invested such high draft picks for defensive linemen in recent years.

So with defensive end Michael Bennett’s contract being up in just a few weeks, he’s going to look to hit a payday. And given data the thinktank crowd at ProFootballFocus.com has generated, Bennett will nail the lottery shortly. Those numbers geeks have Bennett ranked among the NFL elite at pressuring the quarterback.

Bennett is ranked in a tie at No. 4, ahead of even J.J. Watt and Elvis Dumervil, in pressuring quarterbacks.

As for all-around productivity, the PFF.com crowd has Bennett ranked No. 8 among NFL defenseive linemen, ahead of John Abraham and Kamerion Wimbley.

Now throw in another fact that the PFF folks didn’t touch: Until this year, Gerald McCoy has been hobbled by injuries. Da’Quan Bowers has been hobbled by injuries. Adrian Clayborn is out for the year with a knee injury.

So three of the top five Bucs defensive linemen are injury prone. Bennett is not.

You know what Joe thinks? For every game Bucs quarterback Josh Freeman has like the past two weeks, three if you include his inaccuracy against the Dixie Chicks, cash that could have gone to Freeman will instead be slotted to Bennett.

That is if the Bucs don’t franchise Bennett. Either way, Bennett will hit the lottery in a few weeks. He’s a good guy, a stand-up guy, a productive guy so Joe has no problem if Dominik makes it rain on Bennett.

The Bucs need Bennett to remain in the fold, in no uncertain terms.

Joe remembers just a couple of months ago how a number of loud Bucs fans were so fed up with the struggles of Josh Freeman, they begged for Bucs rock star general manager Mark Dominik to draft West Virginia quarterback Geno Smith next April.

While Joe thought those wishes were outrageous, since, Freeman’s recent freefall has sort of opened Joe’s eyes to why that group of fans wanted so badly to turn the page.

Given Freeman’s struggles, Joe already wrote this will just give Dominik more leverage when/if he extends Freeman’s contract, which is set to expire after the 2013 season. Joe fully expects that to happen.

It seems eye-RAH! Kaufman of the Tampa Tribune is of the same mind. Appearing on the “Booger and Rich Show” on WHFS-FM 98.7 Tuesday, co-hosted by former Bucs defensive tackle Booger McFarland and Rich Herrera, Kaufman confessed that Freeman was so terrible Sunday, it was the first time Kaufman wondered if Freeman will ever be the franchise quarterback the Bucs boast about.

But Kaufman said Freeman isn’t going anywhere and the Bucs are just going to have to learn to deal with Freeman’s moderate peaks and deep valleys.

“Freeman was so inaccurate — I have been a big, big Freeman supporter. I said if he doesn’t come out big by 2010, I don’t know anything about football. So I am not going to be a hypocrite. That is the first time, even with all his problems last year, that he was so bad in Sunday’s first half, that I looked around and said, ‘What is going on with Josh Freeman?’ And don’t think for a second that Mike Sullivan and Greg Schiano weren’t thinking the same thing.

“You can’t go back to the drawing board. Half the teams in this league wish they had Josh Freeman, and that is a fact. You look at teams like the Cardinals — I mean that is a disaster. The Jets, they have absolutely nothing. Look, Freeman had a bad game. Won’t be the first one, won’t be the last one. This kid is going to play. He is not going to be a 68 percent passer. This is not Drew Brees we are talking about. But the kid throws a very good deep ball. He is much respected in the room. He wants to be a leader. He’s bright and I think we have found a new maturity in him. He wants to be outstanding. Unless I am mistaken, you are not going to go out and get someone with the 20th pick in the draft, I am sorry and if there is someone out there in free agency, someone is going to beat you to it. There is not going to be anybody better than Freeman. I’m not breaking the bank on Freeman but I’m not willing to say [the Bucs] made a mistake in 2009. The repercussion of that sets you back another five years.”

As Joe asked Sunday, is Freeman the long-term answer for the Bucs? After the past three weeks, surrounded by all his flashing toys but failing, Joe must answer that he doesn’t know.

But as Kaufman pointed out, just look around at other teams’ quarterbacks. Arizona, San Diego, Jacksonville, Kansas City and the Jets likely would kill to have Freeman. Perhaps even Carolina, Minnesota, Dallas, Oakland and even Houston (yes, Houston) — to name just a handful–might prefer Freeman as their starting signal-caller.

Freeman has every tangible one could ever want in a quarterback. That is not the issue.

Unless Freeman walks after next year — highly unlikely — Freeman will be your starting Bucs quarterback for the foreseeable future.

Dicey accuracy and skittish throws under pressure included.

One of the most bizarre roster moves made by the Bucs this season was the release of Brandon McDonald six weeks ago. McDonald was a veteran cornerback, the opening day nickel cornerback, and he at least had good flashes and an interception during his eight games with the Bucs.

Two weeks weeks before McDonald was cut, even the leader of the New Schiano Order raved about him.

“I’m impressed,” Greg Schiano said of McDonald. “His work ethic, his attention to detail. This guy’s a pro.”

Well, for some reason Schiano and rockstar general manager Mark Dominik thought Myron Lewis was a better player and sent McDonald packing. But now McDonald has replaced Lewis, who is on injured reserve. The Bucs announced the re-signing of McDonald tonight.

As atrocious as the Bucs secondary has been, Joe’s almost excited by this move.

Joe always gets a laugh out of seeing the various nutrition and post-workout replenishment directives on display in the Bucs’ locker room, courtesy of the team nutritionist. 

Joe’s all-time favorite was a post-practice option of immediately consuming about 24 ounces of chocolate milk along with more healthy feasting.

These guys consume a hell of a lot of chow.

But it surprised Joe to hear skinny Mike Williams last night on his radio show talk about downing 7,000 calories daily during the season — 7,000! Williams said he gets heat from the team nutritionist about eating vegetables — “he sounds like my mom” — and primarily loads up on steak and pasta, and then he’ll often grab another steak on his own after eating “what they give me.”

Damn, Joe should have played in the NFL. What a dream job.

If Williams is inhaling 7,000 calories, what is, say, Roy Miller gobbling up? And what was Miller eating when the heinous Jim Bates Experience ordered him to gain serious weight after being drafted? These thoughts almost made Joe forget about Rachel Watson for a moment.

Almost.

Last week, when Joe noted Bucs quarterback Josh Freeman folded under pressure and vanished for a quarter, which the Broncos took advantage of and rallied for a key win, Joe was largely raked over the coals for pointing out what some fans considered heresy.

But more proof was on video Sunday for all to see — all who cared to see. Freeman was simply off, terribly so, in an embarrassing, playoff-killing loss to the Beagles, a game in which a rookie, third-round pick playing in his fifth NFL game stood tall under constant pressure from the Bucs and delivered a win.

Well, the folks at ProFootballFocus.com have studied the video and are of the mind that Freeman’s performance was far more ghastly Sunday then Joe initially believed.

In short, when Freeman faced pressure from the Beagles, he completed a grand total of zero attempts.

Off Day for Freeman

Buccaneers quarterback, Josh Freeman (-1.8) was a little off for most of the game. He never seemed to settle into a rhythm, finishing the game 14 of 32 on his graded passes. All year Freeman’s struggles have come when he is under pressure, and this game was no different. When under pressure Freeman didn’t complete a pass, going 0 of 9, and many of those nine were way off target. As soon as he feels pressure he rushes his throws and becomes extremely inaccurate. His QB rating with no pressure was a very impressive 106.9, but against pressure just 39.6.

As Joe has pointed out, priority No. 1 for Greg Schiano come January is to brainstorm a way to repair that sieve of a secondary. Whether that means changes to personnel and staff, time will tell.

The No. 2 objective for Schiano and offensive coordinator Mike Sullivan will be to find out why Freeman gets so rattled under pressure. Hell, Joe even kept his composure when he met Rachel Watson this past summer; no small feat.

Given Sullivan’s track record with Eli Manning, Joe’s confident Sullivan can help Freeman. It will be an important task as the near future of the Bucs franchise may very well depend on that outcome.

“Good move, Glazer. Now get the beer to pour at 36.9 degrees.”

Determined to obliterate local blackouts, in part by rewarding serious Bucs fans, Team Glazer has slashed prices for 35 percent of all season tickets, so the Buccaneers announced today.

All kinds of price points and virtual field views can be seen on Buccaneers.com. The lowest price season tickets remains at $30 for adults. The cheapest lower level season ticket has dropped from $75 to $65 next year.

Joe’s not sure this will generate a stampede of new season ticket holders. But it’s a wise and appropriate move.