Joe loves Cadillac Williams to death. If half the players in the NFL — much less one of Williams’  teammates at running back (ahem) — had the same heart and desire as Caddy, the NFL would truly be a wonder to behold.

So this is not a knock on Williams. Rather, it’s a source of concern for Joe.

Caddy is 28, in some circles that’s middle-aged for running backs. He’s walking on two man-reconstructed knees. Not a good thing. And he’s also a workhorse.

Per Vacation Man, of Stalinist BSPN — these days, that’s a friggin’ compliment to that children’s network — writes how no running back in the NFC South was on the field more than Cadillac Williams and that the Bucs have him penciled in as their No. 1 back this season.

Tampa Bay’s Cadillac Williams was on the field for almost 60 percent of Tampa Bay’s offensive plays and was the only division running back to take part in more than 50 percent of his team’s offensive plays. Not bad for a guy who has endured two major knee injuries in his career.

Let’s be real here: The Bucs were one of the worst teams in the league at running the ball last year — the numbers don’t lie. A year removed, the Bucs plan on using a guy who every time he runs around the right corner Joe holds his breath, not because he might bust a long gain but because he might bust a knee (again), and that he’s not exactly a spring chicken. This concerns Joe a great deal.

Don’t pin this on the offensive line either. If Donald Penn, Jeff Faine, Davin Joseph and Jeremy Trueblood were somehow cut, they’d be on another team before nightfall.

Next year in Joe’s eyes, Mark Dominik has two positions that need upgrading for the Bucs to jump to the next level: Defensive end and running back.

Joe can see Cadillac coming off the bench as an effective running back. Not as a No. 1 back. Not at his age with two rebuilt knees.

Josh Freeman is just one of a number of young players NFL.com's Michael Lombardi likes.

Last year was a nightmare for Bucs fans. A team for which fans had grown accustomed to enjoying annual playoff runs, if not a Super Bowl run, was suddenly reduced to a laughing stock within a few months.

Despite the fact it appears the Bucs have a few young players who may be elite players in the not so distant future, many Bucs fans were aghast at the way opposing offenses abused the heinous Jim Bates Experiment and opposing defenses rendered the Bucs offense impotent as Connie Chung.

On paper, with the Bucs depending on so much from so many rookies, it’s easy to see why fans are still outraged. Just be patient ,Bucs fans. Just one more year and it will turn around.

That’s the word from Michael Lombardi of NFL.com. He writes that the Bucs are one year away from busting things wide open.

The Buccaneers have some nice pieces in place, but it will take at least one more year of acquiring players to have a playoff roster.

This is exactly what the Bucs have been trying to tell fans all along: Stock up the roster with young, talented players, and when they mature fill in a few holes with free agents.

It happened with the Bucs before. And Lombardi believes in will happen again. Just not this season.

Those expecting Gerald McCoy to turn around the Bucs defense may be expecting too much too soon.

While Joe has high hopes for the Bucs defense and is generally excited about the two rookie defensive tackles Mark Dominik drafted last April, Joe knows, and is generally frightened, that the Bucs are relying too heavily on too many rookies.

Seems as though good guy and semi-regular (?) Joe reader Tom Jones of the St. Petersburg Times agrees with Joe. In a recent live chat on his paper’s site, Jones pointed out that the Bucs defense could take a step back while waiting for the rooks to season.

dspkabledspkable:
2 rookie DT’s mean some growing pains on the D-line. Will we suffer more in the run defense or QB pressures as these guys get their feet wet?

Tom Jones:
Good analysis. You’re right. There will be some growing pains for sure. When you talk to football people, they always say (somewhat surprisingly) that it’s more difficult to adjust to playing run defense than pass defense. Pass defense is simple: lower your head and go after the quarterback. But run defense takes discipline to stay in your gaps, etc. So, I would say run defense could be an issue more than pass defense in the early going for the young DTs.

As Pat Kirwan of NFL.com and Sirius NFL Radio has pointed out, rookie defensive tackles struggle more often than they shine.

In short, if Gerald McCoy and/or Brian Price can rack up 30 tackles and three sacks, for a rookie, those are good numbers and will be a good season.

Former Bucs QB Jeff Carlson

By JEFF CARLSON
JoeBucsFan.com analyst

Former Bucs quarterback Jeff Carlson (1990 & 1991) writes The QB Blast column here at JoeBucsFan.com. Joe is ecstatic to have him firing away. Carlson is often seen as a color analyst on Bright House Sports Network, and he trains quarterbacks of all ages locally via his company, America’s Best Quarterback.

There is no question whom the starting quarterback of the Buccaneers is this year, unlike last. Going into this season, their quarterback has nine games of pro experience in what would be his rookie year had he decided to finish his college eligibility.

So, with only a single offseason in which the offensive coordinator is properly prepared for the upcoming season with new plays and formations in tow to officially run his offense, it begs the question, how much time does Josh Freeman need under center in the preseason to be ready to go with his new receivers?

The heavy investment in new receiving personnel, and the lack of production from the leftover crew of wideouts, should translate into a significant amount of preseason time together to get the kinks out and their groove on. But as surely as night follows day, now that Freeman is “The Man,” he will follow the well-worn script of all his starting QB predecessors: In Game 1 of preseason game he’ll play the first quarter (and possibly a series of the second, depending on how many offensive plays the team gets), the first half of Game #2, into the 3rd quarter in Game 3 and a brief appearance in the preseason finale.

There is almost no variance from this script when you are deemed the starting QB in the NFL.

If I’m not mistaken, even Joe Flacco two years ago and Matthew Stafford last year followed this system pretty closely even without a down of NFL experience.  Mark Sanchez wasn’t far off, but he had the more experienced Kellen Clemens to fight off. And in football sometimes you have to give the illusion of competition to the veteran, even though everyone knows the outcome of the QB competition.

I expect Sam Bradford’s preseason playing time in St. Louis to look exactly the same as Freeman’s, even though he is a rookie who barely even played football last year.

There is always the talk about building the quarterback’s “chemistry” with the receivers and there is some truth to the concept of familiarity helping somewhere along the line.

There is a great description of just that in the current edition of ESPN The Magazine.  The coverboy, Aaron Rogers, is one of my favorite QBs (he needs to quit trying to make so many big plays, protect the ball and live to play another down), and he explains a big play to Donald Driver last year that was all non-verbal communication and each player just “knowing” what the other would do and how it worked out perfectly.

These things are worked on over time, but Brett Favre really blew the whole “chemistry” concept out of the water after he missed training camp with a brand new team and then made unbelievable play after play throughout the season, while leading them to the NFC Championship game with barely had a handful of practices with the Vikings under his belt. 

Yes, I understand he was almost a 20-year vet, but there was no “chemistry” built at all.

Just don’t go into this preseason expecting the Buccaneers’ coaching staff to veer from the format that everyone has used for so many years. Remember, the NFL is a copycat league.  (Heck, with the Vikings’ success, teams might start bringing in their QBs after training camp and giving that a shot).

By the way, bringing in Jeff Garcia to play back-up to Freeman would be a more red-flagged mistake than making Byron Leftwich the starter last season, and we know how well that experiment went.  Not only is he a year removed from the NFL at 40+ years old, but Garcia breaks down more well-designed plays by scrambling before they even have a chance to form that he looks like a Jack Russell Terrier chasing a field full of rabbits.

“Jiminy Christmas” that sends offensive coordinators out of the league sometimes.

How bout Team Glazer checking in as owners of two sports teams valued over $1 billion, with both placed in the top 12 on Forbes‘ latest list of the most valuable franchises in sports.

Manchester United sits ranked No. 1 at $1.84 billion, and the Bucs are No. 12, valued at a cool $1.09 billion.

And Team Glazer manages the Bucs so efficiently, per Forbes the team is the eighth most valuable club in the NFL!

Unbelievable businessmen these Glazers are, having bought the Buccaneers for less than $200 million about 15 years ago!

Bucs fans can rest easily remembering Joel Glazer saying “money will never be an issue” when re-building the Buccaneers into a lasting contender.

Just about any Bucs fan who doesn’t use a white cane knows Bucs blocking icon Michael Clayton has had trouble hauling passes in.

Joe’s not going to get into why, but Joe does have some numbers that will alarm Bucs fans.

Per FootballOutsiders.com, a thoughtful site that sometimes goes a bit too far trying to mirror baseball with mindless, empty convoluted stats that give 30-year old virgins a reason to beat their, um, chests, has a list of NFL receivers who have the most trouble hanging on to the football.

Clayton’s name is found second on the list.

Joe’s not even going to try to find out what the obscure statistics are that Bill Barnwell of FootballOutsiders.com uses because it bores Joe to tears (Joe’s into football strategy, not algebra), but of the 45 times last year that Bucs quarterbacks threw the ball to Clayton, he caught only 16 of those passes.

In short, Clayton only caught slightly more than a third of the passes thrown his way in 2009. That suggests either Clayton received blanket coverage from opposing defenses or he had terrible quarterbacks throwing him the ball, or that he simply couldn’t catch.

More likely, it’s a combination of all three.

This seems to tell Joe that maybe Josh Freeman shouldn’t target Clayton unless he is totally wide open.

That is, if Clayton is on the Bucs roster come the second Sunday in September.

A very giddy and incredibly playful Brian Price checked in today with the infamous King David Show on WQYK-AM, hosted by Toby David and former Bucs quarterback Shawn King.

Price was upbeat from the start after King introduced him as “Tampa’s newest millionaire.”

It’s “a dream come true but a job undone,” Price said. “I got paid for what I did in college.”

Price dropped the typical playerspeak but also explained that he’s already in Tampa training specifically to acclimate himself to the humidity.

Joe’s lived in Los Angeles, Price’s hometown, and Joe vividly remembers people literally going outside during a rainstorm to drink beer and play because it was such a rare event. There’s no doubt that Price will have a huge adjustment from his days in the dry climates of the Pac-10.

Beyond that, Price said he’s thinking of buying an all black new Camaro.

Joe’s just ecstatic to have him coming to camp. The odds are pretty strong that he or Gerald McCoy will turn out to be a helluva player.

Cobbling together a list of 13 guys with a good shot of making their first Pro Bowl appearance after the 2010 season, John Clayton, “The Professor,” of BSPN.com, doesn’t have one Bucs player in the mix.

Not even Aqib Talib or Tanard Jackson, who are Ronde Barber’s “can’t miss” stars.

Clayton preferred the Bengals cornerbacks Johnathan Joseph and Leon Hall as his favorite emerging stars in the secondary.

This is the best cornerback combo that doesn’t get enough recognition leaguewide. Under coordinator Mike Zimmer, the Bengals have turned their defense around over the past two seasons; the shutdown abilities of Joseph and Hall have been key to that improvement. Joseph ended up being a second alternate last season while Hall was a fourth alternate. Sure, it’s hard to crack the AFC cornerback Pro Bowl list with the trio of Nnamdi Asomugha, Darrelle Revis and Champ Bailey at the top, but Joseph and Hall are knocking on the door.

Joe thinks Talib is knocking on that same door and could easily be in the same class as all the top corners this season.

Speaking of the Bengals, looking ahead at the Bucs schedule Joe is most intrigued by the Bucs-Bengals game in Week 5, which comes right after an early bye week. The Bucs likely will be sitting at 1-2 or 0-3 with their season all but on the line against a playoff team on the road.

The young Bucs receivers, with their feet already wet, will get an extreme test from those corners, and Antonio Bryant will be lined up on the other side of the ball.

Ahh, Joe can’t wait for some football.

Seems as though former Bucs quarterback Jeff Garcia is still out of a job. Joe has a suggestion for Garcia: Call Mark Dominik.

Say what you will about the Bucs this year, whether you are Randy Cross and see a trainwreck, or if you are commenter JimBuc and see Raheem the Dream raising the Vince Lombardi Trophy amid a shower of confetti on an early February night in Dallas, the prospects of the Bucs doing anything offensively if quarterback Josh Freeman goes down is no less than frightening.

Career backup Josh Johnson proved to be true to the moniker bestowed upon him by Raheem the Dream in limited starts last year. Beyond that are two signal-callers who have yet to take an NFL snap.

If there’s a team out there crying for a reliable backup quarterback, it is the Bucs. Jeff Garcia can be that man.

Besides, with Rachel Watson now tormenting fathers in the general Land O’ Lakes area, who better to brighten the sidelines than Carmella?

Bucs fans seeking comfort might want to stay away from the Internet for the next year seven weeks. All the preseason prognostications could be quite hard on Tampa Bay.

Randy Cross, the former All-Pro turned NFL Radio talking head, took the down-on-the-Bucs theme to the limit in his latest projections for NationalFootballPost.com.

Cross gives the Bucs the No. 1 pick in the 2011 draft.

2011 NFL Draft Top 5

1) Tampa Bay     Lowest payroll in NFL, youth and inexperience give the Bucs the top spot.

2) St. Louis        When the Rams settle their ownership issue and acquire a lot more talent, they’ll stop drafting here.

3) Buffalo          Building “Lines” and finding a QB doesn’t happen fast these days.

4) Kansas City   This is K.C.’s last year in Top 10 of the draft for awhile

Joe’s not seeing the Bucs as the worst team in the NFL. If so, and the Bucs are stuck with two or three wins, Joe is quite sure that would bring a swift end to the Raheem The Dream era.

While on face value it appears unlikely that first round draft pick Gerald McCoy would sit out training camp, it’s a sure bet that fellow rookie defensive tackle Brian Price will be at One Buc Palace a week from Saturday when training camp begins.

That’s because the Bucs signed Price this afternoon.

Price, a second round pick of the Bucs, became the NFL’s highest drafted player to date to sign with his respective NFL team.

Price and the Bucs agreed to a four-year contact. Terms were not disclosed.

“I’m glad my agent got the deal done, so now I can concentrate on having a great Training Camp. I’m looking forward to contributing to the Buccaneers’ dominant defensive tradition,” Price said in a statement released by the Bucs.

Since Price is the highest rookie to sign thus far from the 2010 draft class, it sort of puts a dent into the popular (in some circles) “Glazers are cheap” cry.

It was important that Price got into camp on time. He was hobbled in preseason workouts due to an injury and missed most of the Bucs OTAs due to Price’s school requirements at UCLA.

Good guy Stephen Holder, of the St. Pete Times, penned a look at the key battles for starting positions on the Bucs this preseason.

Holder names left guard, left defensive end, strong safety, receiver and defensive tackle as the hotspots.

Still, as we approach training camp, Tampa Bay still has a fair amount of competition for jobs. There are at least six starting spots that, near as we can tell, are either wide open or where the incumbent will likely have to fight off a challenge from others.

Joe is quite hysterical reading this paragraph from Holder. Just six weeks ago, his fellow beat writer, The Mad Twitterer, said all but one starting job on the Bucs was up for grabs. Stroud even went so far to say that hogwash fact is what will make training camp so exciting.

Of course, Holder is like any other intelligent Bucs fan. He knows there are several starting jobs in stone on the Bucs, including more than half the defense.

One position Holder passed on is running back.

Joe firmly believes Derrick Ward will be given a chance to redeem Mark Dominik win the starting running back job.  He’s not being paid handsomely to hold his helmet.

It’s highly unlikely Cadillac Willams (28) or Ward (almost 30) will be Buccaneers when the team hopefully reaches its “lasting contender” phase. So why wouldn’t the team simply play the hot guy on 2010?

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Joe has been scouring the interwebs looking for Bucs stuff (in between e-mailing and calling out of town writers for interviews), as it seems many of the local pen and mic club are taking a siesta.

Joe takes no siesta, unless Rachel Watson comes calling, of course.

In his research, Joe came across rather inflammatory accusations about Raheem the Dream’s job status by Todd L. Frank of RealFootball365.com. There, in a column written earlier this month, Frank suggests that Team Glazer regretted hiring Raheem the Dream and the Bucs were going to jettison Raheem the Dream this offseason.

Just came off his first year, but the Bucs were showing signs of remorse and considered canning him earlier this offseason. If Morris and the team don’t show improvement, they could pull the trigger.

This is simply an outrageous statement by any measure. Of course, Raheem the Dream could be let go if the Bucs win, say, two games this year. And Joe could also find himself in the embrace of Rachel Watson someday as well.

But Frank never attributes his source nor even hints he has a source in claiming Raheem the Dream was about to be fired. Exactly who is feeding him this information? Or is Frank just throwing feces against the wall?

Now if Frank somehow mistook Team Glazer waiting a few days after the regular season to give Raheem the Dream another year, well, OK, Joe can see where Frank may have connected two-and-two and came up with five. But to not attribute where he obtained such explosive information is beyond the pale.

Bucs icon and resident old man Ronde Barber sat down with NFL Network anchor Rich Eisen for a long interview on all things Buccaneers.

Joe recommends you watch the entire video.

(First, shame on Eisen — and his researchers — for leading off the interview telling everyone that Barber and Jermaine Phillips are the only remaining Bucs on the current roster from the Super Bowl season. Phillips has been off the team for months.)

In his very laid back style, Barber shares his impressions of Gerald McCoy, Josh Freeman and much more.

Asked to name top talent on the Bucs, Barber singled out two of his cohorts in the secondary.

“You look at guys, especially on the defense, guys like Tanard Jackson and Aqib Talib. Those guys are can’t-miss stars in this league,” Barber said. … Interesingly, the next and final guy Barber identified as top talent was Stylez White, who enters a season as a starter for the first time in his career.

Barber explained that he’s in the final year of his six-year contract, an accomplishment he says neither he nor the Bucs expected when he signed that deal.

Joe found it intriguing that Barber talked like a guy who genuinely wants to play in 2011, but Barber wondered aloud whether a team will want him at 36-years old.

Always working to give Bucs fans fresh, unique daily content, when others aren’t nearly as dedicated as the final days before training camp drag on, Joe spoke with Bob Asmussen of the Champaign (Ill.) News-Gazette, who is the paper’s primary beat writer covering the University of Illinois. Joe reached out to him to get some background on Bucs rookie wide receiver Arrelious Benn.

Asmussen writes for his paper’s Illini Web site, IlliniHQ.com, where Joe was featured in a story about the Bucs earlier this year.

Here is Asmussen’s perspective on Benn:

JoeBucsFan:  West-Central Florida isn’t much of a hotbed of Illini football and Illinois isn’t seen much on local TV sets outside of sporadic games on the Big Ten Network, especially after the Rose Bowl appearance two years ago. What made Benn such a special talent for the Illini?

Bob Asmussen:  A couple of things. First, he worked harder than anybody. Just look at him physically. You don’t get to be like that without a lot of time running, lifting and catching passes. Plus, he eats about as well as any football player I’ve come in contact with. When your best player is also your hardest worker that’s a great thing.

Second, he is extremely confident in his own ability, but isn’t a jerk about it. He basically thinks he will make every play and does it in such a convincing manner that you start to believe it too.

Joe:  Was there a particular play or a specific game that you watched Benn play at Illinois and first thought to yourself, “Wow, this guy’s going to get paid to play on Sundays?”

Bob:  Easy, freshman year against Penn State. First, he returned a kickoff for a touchdown. And later in the game, he had a spectacular catch and run for a touchdown, breaking away from several Penn State defenders. That play, to me, was his best at Illinois.

The first time I saw him on the Illinois campus was at a camp before his senior year in high school. He was catching everything and I turned to somebody and said, “That’s Jerry Rice.” Now, of course, that’s a stretch, but he was better than any receiver Illinois had at the time. Not even close.

Joe:  You stated previously you got to know Benn and his family pretty well. Can you flush out some of the details about what kind of a background he came from?

Bob:  It’s interesting. His mom, Denise Benn, is a wonderful person. She is one of the nicer parents I’ve dealt with during my time covering Illinois. And she hasn’t had an easy life. Arrelious’ older brother, Trulon Henry, spent part of Benn’s childhood in federal prison for armed robbery. The family is very open about it and Trulon has turned his life around. In fact, he will likely be a starting safety for Illinois this season after spending two years at a Chicago-area junior college. The brothers are very close and I think Trulon’s comeback has been inspiring to Arrelious.

Trulon was excited when he heard Arrelious was going to the Bucs. He thinks that’s a great fit.

Joe:  What is it on a personal level that may impress you about Benn or something that not many people may know? Is he a leader by vocal commands, or is he a leader by example? Is he just a lunchpail kind of a guy or is he flamboyant at all?

Bob:  He leads by example, but got more vocal later in his career. I think that’s pretty normal. He is a lunchpail guy who can be flamboyant. But not too much. Mom and his brother wouldn’t stand for it. He is very mature for his age, which probably is due in part to the difficult background. I thought he seemed like an adult as a freshman. He is easy to talk to and always has a smile. But he is also very self-critical. When he has a bad game and the team loses, you can tell that it hurts.

Joe:  From your research and knowledge and insight, how would you project Benn to be as an NFL wide receiver, say, five years down the road? What trait does he have that suggests he will be a survivor or a stud in the league?

Bob:  I think he has a chance to be an All-Pro. He has the physical skills and the mental makeup. And he is tough, playing through injuries during his Illinois career. I think he will get better. I’m guessing he will have the usual growing pains his first season, then blossom as a second-year player. You see that so often with receivers in the NFL. Once he gets going, he can be a 100-catch guy if that’s what the Bucs want to do with him. I’d think he is much more likely be a star than he is to be a bust.

If Brett Favre had kept his mouth shut, him playing for the Bucs would not have been just something found on a video game.

Two years ago, in what would be Chucky’s last season in Tampa Bay, he nearly pulled off a trade to bring future Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre to the Bucs, despite what former Bucs general manager Bruce Almighty might (still) deny.

In talking recently with BSPN, recounted by NFL.com, Farve spoke of how his chances to come to the Bucs were very real until his mouth got in the way.

Favre also revealed aspects of his standoff with Green Bay Packers general manager Ted Thompson and coach Mike McCarthy. The Packers traded Favre to the New York Jets in 2008 after the quarterback changed his mind about retirement the first time.

“There was just silence,” Favre told the magazine. “I said, ‘Well, what are we gonna do?’

“They made it pretty clear I wasn’t going to play there, and I said, ‘How about the Vikings or even the Lions?’ I wanted to stay in the same division. They said that wasn’t going to happen, but maybe Tampa. I said, ‘Fine, trade me to Tampa. I’ll whip your asses in Week 4,'” Favre stated. “Maybe that was a mistake. I’m flying back to Hattiesburg thinking I’m going to the Bucs, and I get off the plane and Bus tells me I’ve been traded to the Jets. I said, ‘Bull,’ but they were smart; they released the news so I’d look like an ass if I backed out.”

Oh, how might the Bucs be different if Farve had kept his mouth shut. It’s possible Chucky would still be here. Raheem the Dream would be the Bucs defensive coordinator. Future Hall of Famer Derrick Brooks may also still be here, but more likely he would have been able to exit with honor and respect last season rather than be thrown to the curb like a used beer cup.

It makes Joe wonder what might have been.

Some Tinseltown heavyweights reached out to Joe recently to work with them on their tailgating/cooking/football junkie reality show. An episode will be shot in Tampa next month.

Now Joe, after making sure this wasn’t some bizarre porn outfit much research on this Hollywood group, decided to get involved in Backyard Blitz.

A casting call is coming up soon in the Tampa Bay area. Plus there will be opportunities for audience members to be part of the show and get paid cash for that, in addition to eating free food (definitely Joe’s idea of hard labor.)

Joe’s going to have a lot more info. soon. But for now, if you think you want to be on TV, here’s Step 1.

BE PART OF THE COMPETITION
Do you go crazy for the TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS? Are you all about tailgating before the big game? If you’ve got team spirit and want to put your BBQ skills to the test, we’re looking for you!

You and a teammate of your choice will go head to head with two other tailgate-tested teams to huddle up around the grill and prove who the MVP’s will be in this competitive cook-off.
You’ll need two dishes to score your touchdown! So put down the playbook, pick up the cookbook and get ready to run your drills behind the grill on Backyard Blitz!

Send the following information for you and your teammate to BackyardBlitzCasting@gmail.com
NAME
PHONE NUMBER
2 CURRENT PHOTOS
FAVORITE BUCCANEERS PLAYER(S)
HOW YOU AND YOUR TEAMMATE KNOW EACH OTHER
SIGNATURE TAILGATE DISHES

Joe advises following the directions above closely in order to be considered. …Again, Joe will post more information very soon.