Brian Price (center) still has a long road back to football

Rock star Bucs general manager Mark Dominik has said he’s not concerned about Brian Price returning from his ugly injury for the 2011 season.

Joe’s hardly as confident after reading the recent feature on Price from Steve Wyche of NFL.com. Not exactly inspiring.

“I’m just lifting weights, not running yet, but I might be able to start,” [Price] said. “It just depends on how I feel.”

How Price feels is one thing. How soon he should crank up his workload is another. Price has a high pain tolerance as he showed last season by playing through this injury that was sustained in a summer time mini-camp. The fractures weren’t discovered until after the fifth game. For the longest time the issue seemed to be his hamstrings, but the tug from the cracks in his pelvis was the real culprit.

He was placed on injured reserve shortly after Week 5.

Price’s desire to get going could trump his rehabilitation, which is why he’s trying to be cautious during a lockout in which he’s not under the care of Tampa Bay’s trainers and doctors. He is rehabilitating in Tampa, a decision he made on the day the lockout was lifted and players could have contact with team employees.

Call Joe crazy, but how did the Bucs medical staff misdiagnose Price for all those weeks? That a serious miss. It does happen, but these are presumably the same doctors the Bucs will rely on to assess Da’Quan Bowers and Adrian Clayborn, plus the pile of Bucs returning from significant injuries.

It’s May, so Joe’s going to try and keep a positive outlook on Price’s condition. Hopefully, he can get on the field and capture the early buzz at training camp again.

Joe suggests you read the entire NFL.com story. It’s revealed that Price is married to track star Candice Davis. Well done, Mr. Price.

A couple of interesting items crossed Joe’s keyboard in recent days and, in Joe’s eyes, paints a largely impressive picture of Bucs quarterback Josh Freeman.

First, Joe got into a discussion about Freeman working out privately with skill position players both at USF and at the IMG headquarters in Bradenton. Unlike some NFC South quarterbacks, Freeman did not climb atop the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and yell to the hundreds of thousands of Bucs fans where and when he would be working out.

Then yesterday Joe discussed a tidbit in Peter King’s MMQB column where Mark Sanchize brought two dozen players to work out with him before Jets coaches where Freeman brought just two.

What does this tell you about Freeman?

It tells Joe that he is single-minded. Freeman just cares about football.

Yeah, sure Freeman could invite the enter Tampa Bay area to watch him and other Bucs practice at USF or a high school or a park. There is a reason why the Bucs close many practices and it’s not because they are paranoid of survellience from other NFL squads. No, practices are closed to the public because the team can get a lot of work in without distractions.

Sure, Freeman could score brownie points by having a public workout, but it seems Freeman is serious about these workouts and doesn’t want to waste his time. If he and his teammates are going to work out, it’s for and with a purpose, not a public relations stunt.

Is it so hard to keep the marijuana out of the car?

Apparently it is for Bucs defensive end Alex Magee. He was slapped by Tampa cops today for driving with a license plate tag expired more than six months and for misdemeanor possession of marijuana, so reports Victoria Lim of Bright House Sports Network.

Magee’s full name – Arcilla Alexander Magee – was driving his 2009 Dodge Charger when he was stopped on East Kennedy Blvd. and North Nebraska Ave. at 1:13pm, the report says. The officer smelled marijuana and searched the vehicle. The investigation turned up a “misdemeanor amount of field test positive marijuana”, according to the report.

While the Bucs can’t punish Magee during a lockout, one might think the organization is not going to tolerate a drug charge from a bottom-of-the-roster guy, especially one that would be in “the room,” as Raheem Morris calls it, with all the precious young defensive linemen.

Just 24 years old in April, Magee has three NFL seasons in the books and made a huge play in the Bucs’ January win in New Orleans.

Stylez White’s potential future with the Bucs just got a little brighter.

It seems Rex Ryan has written a book devoid of feet-orgy stories but filled with interesting football nuggets.

Sports Illustrated scribe Peter King, who recently insulted Team Glazer publicly, tells a story from Ryan’s book about the Jets’ decision to draft Mark Sanchez over Josh Freeman. It appears today in King’s popular Monday Morning Quarterback column on SI.com.

Well, it seems the rumors that the Bucs may be featured on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” has reached the computer screen of coffee-slurping, popcorn-shoveling, fried chicken-eating, oatmeal-loving Peter King of Sports Illustrated.

In his must-read weekly Monday Morning Quarterback, King briefly touches the subject of the Bucs and HBO.

I think I’d watch the Bucs on Hard Knocks, and I’d be interested. But it won’t be the must-see TV series the Jets made with HBO and NFL Films last year. No team would be.

This is the type of mentality Joe has cautioned Bucs fans about. It’s New York producer mentality, the type of thought that runs TV networks.

Yeah, sure, Bucs fans in droves will watch the Bucs on “Hard Knocks,” but what of the rest of the country?

Eight years ago the Bucs would have been perfect for “Hard Knocks.” The team was loaded with larger-than-life personalities, many nationally known like Warren Sapp, Meshawn Johnson and Chucky.

On the other hand, seeing how Raheem Morris interacts with everyone, he could quickly become an NFL household name not unlike Herm Edwards became when “Hard Knocks” featured the Chiefs.

Then there is always the danger element of a camera crew following around Aqib Talib — provided he is still with the team — who already had an aversion to the Fourth Estate and Joe can only imagine how his bitterness may have simmered in recent months.

Joe didn’t expect to hurl his remote control on a lazy Sunday night.

After all, the Rays had continued their dominance that afternoon and the Lakers were knocked out and humiliated on the wrong end of an epic shooting performance. Life seemed pretty good.

Then Joe stuffed his face and settled in for the lastest Man Channel feature, The Top 100 Players of 2011 on NFL Network. The new series highlights the results of a survey of 400 current NFL players. But as the show counted down Nos. 81-90 Sunday, it was revealed that only two Buccaneers made the entire list.

TWO!

Josh Freeman checked in at No. 86, four spots better than Joe Flacco. And Mike Williams was the top Buccaneer at No. 83.

No Donald Penn. No Aqib Talib. No Ronde Barber. No respect.

Williams showing up higher than Freeman leads Joe to believe the voting players based too much of their selections on highlights. One would figure that players who faced the Bucs would rank Freeman higher than Williams, which should have led to Freeman being ranked higher overall.

Regardless, Williams making the list along with only two other rookies, first-round picks Eric Berry and Ndamukong Suh, speaks volumes for his talent.

Oh, the agony endured by loads of crumpet munching soccer fans of Team Glazer’s English kickball team. Why those stupid Americans, those frugal franchise destroyers, had cut payroll and were about to humiliate Manchester United with cost-cutting moves and their massive debt before the 2010-2011 season. 

These crazy fans were rallying to kick Team Glazer out of the country!

Fast-forward to yesterday, and Team Glazer’s club all but clinched another English Premier League title with their young Mexican star free agent — the same guy fans initially snubbed because he came cheap — scoring a goal to cap his amazing season. In a few weeks, Team Glazer’s kickballers will play in the final of the European championship.

Needless to say Team Glazer has silenced all but the wackiest of the fringe wackos in England, and their club made mountains of cash this season.

What this all has to do with the Bucs, Joe has no clue. But Joe knows there are some X-Files/Twilight Zone/Roswell types who keep close tabs on this stuff.

Saturday Joe wrote a piece about how Josh Freeman was working out with other skill positions players but was keeping the details on the down low as to not attract crowds.

Joe received a few questions from commenters asking why there haven’t been — to anyone’s knowledge — defensive players working out as this insipid lockout continues.

It’s a good question that Joe did not have an answer for. Until now.

Seems as if Gerald McCoy will be hosting Adrian Clayborn in California in two weeks for an OTA of sorts. That’s the word straight from Clayborn’s own fingers via Twitter.

Headed to San Diego in two weeks to train with Gk_McCoy looking forward to learning and getting it in!

Can’t hurt. GMC is in close contact with former Bucs great Warren Sapp who works out of SoCal when on the clock for the NFL Network. It wouldn’t surprise Joe whatsoever if Sapp joins GMC and Clayborn.

Sapp would be about as close to a Bucs coach as these guys are going to get so long as NFL owners keep the players from working.

It seems many are already jumping on the Allen Bradford bandwagon and to Joe’s knowledge, the man has yet to visit the Tampa Bay area since being drafted by the Bucs in the sixth round of last weekend’s draft.

Add Troy Ballard to the list who writes for something called NationalFootballAuthority.com. Ballard seems to believe the Bucs will become a bruising, smashmouth running team with Bradford on the roster.

With Tampa Bay drafting Bradford, that gives them two running backs that are over 235 pounds. The combo of Blount and Bradford has the potential to simply abuse defenses, as they both create size mismatches on nearly every run play.

Combine the weight and size advantage of Blount and Bradford and throw in the speed of Williams, coming off of the bench, and it is going to be a tough rushing attack to slow down. Morris has created a perfect monster in the backfield of size and speed.

Well, that sounds nice but it’s off the mark. Joe loves LaGarrette Blount but he’s not a power runner despite his size. If Blount was a power runner, the Bucs would have beaten the Dixie Chicks in Atlanta this past season.

Ballard may be on to something with Cadillac Williams coming off the bench. Williams seemed to be his best when he had spot running chances as teams were keying on Blount and Cadillac was able to exploit that.

Joe likes what Ballard is suggesting, even though it is not accurate. Just because a dude is huge like Blount doesn’t mean he will be the next coming of Mike Alstott.

The Bucs’ long road back to national respect takes another step tonight as the man channel, NFL Network, rolls out players Nos. 81 through 90 in their series The Top 100 Players of 2011, as voted by a panel of 400 current players.

The show runs for 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with a show featuring fan and player reaction analysis from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Williams is ranked No. 83. No Buccaneers were in the 90s.

Recently, promotional announcements for the series have included LeGarrette Blount highlights. Joe has no clue whether that’s a precursor to Blount getting love, or just a decoy.

Joe’s not confident any other Bucs will make the list other than Donald Penn and Josh Freeman. It will be very interesting to see what Aqib Talib’s peers think of him. Voting for the series was done before Talib’s Texas troubles.

Now Joe just isn’t a beer-soaked, NFL Network-addicted Bucs fan, no sir. Joe is a well-rounded individual.

There are other things Joe enjoys, such as the Rays and the Lightning. Joe is confident you read his musings after each game on JoeRaysFan.com.

Wednesday night, Joe swilled adult beverages while entertaining business clients and local media bigshots at the Ice Palace and thoroughly enjoyed the Bolts sweeping the Crapitals from the NHL postseason.

While Joe is also a baseball and hockey kinda guy, Joe’s a football man first and foremost.

So is the Tampa Bay area. Now Joe has in the recent past received missives from fans about why he isn’t writing about Josh Freeman and other Bucs working out. Simply put, Freeman doesn’t want people to know where and when they are working out, so Joe is not privy to when and where the workouts will be held beforehand.

This same question also got to Pasco County resident and NFC South blogger Pat Yasinskas typing for Disney’s hammer-and-sickle outfit in Conneticut.

Matt in Camden, N.J., wrote to ask why we’ve made such a big deal about Drew Brees organizing workouts with the Saints while there has been only casual mention about Josh Freeman and some of the Buccaneers working out together in Tampa.

Pat Yasinskas: Excellent question, so let me explain the difference. Brees assembled roughly 40 Saints at Tulane University and opened the first day to the media. It was a large-scale event, magnified by the fact that the Saints truly are the only thing that matters in New Orleans. (I know the Hornets are there, but they exist in the hefty shadow of the Saints.) Freeman’s been doing things a little more quietly and not on nearly as large a scale, and I salute him for going about his business quietly. Freeman’s gone out to the University of South Florida and worked out with some receivers and a few running backs. He’s also gone down to a private training facility with some teammates near Bradenton. The Tampa Bay media’s been kind of tied up with NHL’s Lightning and MLB’s Rays, so Freeman’s workouts haven’t been a huge local story. Some members of the Panthers and Falcons also are working out in smaller groups. But like the Bucs, they’re not getting as much attention because they didn’t bring in most of the roster and open up a whole session to the media.

Let’s not get carried away. It’s not like if Freeman decided — like Brees did in New Orleans — to issue a public proclamation that he would hold an open workout that the local pen and mic club would be so devoid of resources thanks to the Bolts postseason run and the Rays winning ways that no TV, radio or 19th century news delivery service could cover it. That’s just nonsense and Pat should know better than that since he once was a Bucs beat reporter for the Tampa Tribune.

Would Freeman’s workout be top priority compared to a Rays game or a Bolts postseason story? Of course not, but it wouldn’t be ignored.

Freeman is as big of a sports celebrity in this town as Dirtbag Longoria, Marty St. Louis and Vinny Lecavalier. With all the people  packing the Ice Palace for Bolts games and as many people in this area that watch Rays games (on TV), football in general and the Bucs in particular still rule this town.

To suggest Freeman holding a public workout with teammates during the lockout would not get coverage due to the Bolts playoff run and the Rays success is short-sighted at best.

Joe puts on his businessman jersey every week and scours the local and national business publications. Hey, Joe needs to know what’s going on out there.

Joe sees economic data improving, but also sees the Tampa Bay area lagging behind. However, Orlando appears to be kicking Tampa Bay’s ass when it comes to growth, so reported Robert Trigeaux, the St. Pete Times business columnist.

… Orlando is cultivating businesses faster and smarter than Florida’s other metro areas. Consider this recent Reuters story:

“Orlando is leading Florida out of recession and expanding so briskly the city best known for theme parks is poised to push aside Miami as the state’s fastest growing metropolis for at least a generation.”

Orlando alone generated 23,000 jobs in the year ending in February of the 50,000 jobs created in Florida.

That story and others cite a ranking of the nation’s major metro areas based on “economic strength.” The 2010 rankings were produced by William Fruth of the Policom Corp. research firm in Palm City. His numbers show Orlando ranked No. 1 in Florida and 27th among 366 metro areas nationwide.

By contrast, Tampa Bay ranked behind not only Orlando, but also Miami-Fort Lauderdale and Jacksonville in this state.

That all stinks, but what stinks even more for the Bucs is awareness of the team falling off the map in Orlando.

The Orlando Sentinel eliminated much of its Bucs coverage over the past two years. The newspaper and its website no longer have a Bucs beat writer despite being a mere 90 minutes from Tampa. Good luck even finding a Bucs link on the Sports page of their site.  And their columnists all but ignored the Bucs last year. Orlando’s heinous local sports radio is disinterested in the Bucs, as well.

It’s surely comes from a combination of the Bucs pulling out of Disney for training camp in 2009, newspaper budget slashing, and the lingering stain of the 3-13 season.

Throw in Bucs home games getting blacked out in Orlando, and the Bucs are barely registering a blip on the radar in a growing market where they should be selling loads of tickets and growing lifelong customers.

Joe has no idea how Team Glazer might be addressing this issue, but Joe thinks it’s imperative. Joe would be pleased to meet with Team Glazer to offer real-world solutions to the Orlando market.

Joe’s sure many of his readers watch NFL Network daily. Why Joe can’t imagine why one might choose not to have the real man channel in his home. Surely no football fan could deny himself such pleasure.

Last night on Total Access, in addition to watching footage from various player-organized practices, analysts Warren Sapp and Willie McGinest were posed with the question of whether the NFC South was the best division in football.

Both said, “No.” And Sapp revived the soft schedule/signature win debate that drove many Bucs fans nuts last season.

“[The NFC South] played the NFC West, so I can’t go there,” Sapp said. 

McGinest and Sapp agreed the NFC South was the best division in the NFC entering 2011, but not the NFL.

Joe hopes the Bucs can at least climb into second place in the division. With two of their first eight games against the Saints, that could be decided early.  

In light of a recent commenter expressing his desire to belt commenter Thomas 2.2, and then another commenter egging on the violence, Joe has resurrected his JoeBucsFan.com guide to commenting that addresses this and other issues.

Rather than type boring rules for commenting, Joe decided to let it all hang out on video. (some profanity). Let’s learn to comment in peace.

Wise late-round draft picks usually talk about how they want to contribute and say they’re eager to play special teams.

But it seems Bucs sixth-round manbeast Allen Bradford really loves special teams.

Bradford was recruited to Southern Cal as a safety, then turned into a fullback/running back. Speaking to Shaun King and Toby David on The King David Show this week, on WQYK-AM 1010, Bradford didn’t give the stock answers to playing special teams.

Bradford almost seemed annoyed that he didn’t see the turf during field goals. He said he played on other special teams units, often was a gunner, and he took pride in making “21 tackles.” Though Bradford didn’t specify when, or from what position, he made those tackles.

“I like to hit people,” Bradford said.

During a different interview on 1040 AM, Raheem Morris said Bradford has a lot of “Insurance Graham” in him with his versatility and special teams play.

If the Bucs found another Earnest Graham, who was undrafted out of Florida, the Bucs did darn good in the sixth round.

After interviewing Bucs coach Raheem Morris earlier this week, heard exclusively on SiriusXM NFL Radio, co-hosts of “The Blitz,” popular sports radio host Adam Schein and former NFL quarterback Rich Gannon, were still buzzing.

The duo, who just a few short months ago were harsh critics of the Bucs, have been won over and are now singing the praises of Morris.

In fact, Gannon predicted the addition of first and second round draft choices, defensive ends Adrian Clayborn and Da’Quan Bowers, will make others on the defensive side of the ball for the Bucs that much better.

Adam Schein: Rich, when you hear Raheem Morris talk, you can’t help but get excited, you can’t help but get fired up. You want to play football.

Rich Gannon: There’s no doubt about it and I like what the Bucs did in the draft. They got no production from their defensive ends last year. Stylez White had four sacks and led the team. By adding Adrian Clayborn and Da’Quan Bowers, Stylez White and Kyle Moore will have no choice but to step up their game. Because if they don’t they will be out of a job. And if they respond like they should, that will make that defensive line all the more better when you factor in Gerald McCoy and Brian Price are coming off of injuries. That could be a very impressive defensive front.

Now we all know that Stylez White is not a practice kind of guy, which irks Morris. This got to Morris so much last year that he mocked White by referring to him as Allen Iverson.

The gauntlet has been thrown down by Bucs rock star general manager Mark Dominik: Either White and Moore have to prove their worth — and quickly — or they may be walking the streets asking Jerry Glanville for a gig.

For you NFL Draft junkies that can’t ever get enough draft chatter, Joe has a new nugget for you.

Mark Dominik served up a glimpse at his pre-draft assessments during a recent national interview with former Hubert Mizell radio sidekick turned BSPN Radio host Colin Cowherd. Joe winced when he heard Dominik’s praise of newest Falcons wide receiver Julio Jones.

Colin Cowherd: Who was the best player in the draft? Who had your highest grade?

Mark Dominik: That’s a tough one. … We were big fans obviously of Von Miller and his pash rush ability. Certainly a huge fan of Patrick Peterson and his playmaking and his cover skills, and then the receivers. The nice thing about those four players, with Julio [Jones] and A.J. [Green] , is all those were quality kids off the field, too. You know, all four of those guys, you just felt like you could just take and put them in your locker room and you’re really proud of them.

Joe sincerely hopes Jones doesn’t have a rookie season like Mike Williams did.