Joe is thankful someone gets it.

The Bucs are a three-peat NFC South champion. And the year before that, they won something called the “Super Bowl.”

Yet despite this four-year run you’d think Stewart McClown or Mike Glennon were still the Bucs quarterback, throwing to the likes of Sammie Stroughter and the Calgary Stampeder, Donteea Dye.

National scribe after national scribe after national scribe seems to have already anointed the Dixie Chicks as the new rulers of the NFC South. Why? A 36-year old quarterback with a bum Achilles.

Yes, really.

However, Jeff Kerr of CBS seems to get it. In picking the pecking order of the NFC, Kerr types that the Bucs are a playoff team until they are not. Thus, pencil the Bucs as a playoff team.

7. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
2023 record: 9-8 (reached NFC divisional round)

Making sure they stayed a player in the NFC South, the Buccaneers’ biggest moves of the offseason were retaining Baker Mayfield and Mike Evans. If the Buccaneers didn’t re-sign Mayfield, they [would have been] reaching for a quarterback in this year’s draft. Lavonte David is also back, keeping the majority of the Super Bowl championship core together.

Tampa Bay improved the interior of the offensive line with the selection of Graham Barton in the first round, and added depth at the skill positions with Jalen McMillan at wide receiver (third round) and Bucky Irving at running back (fourth round).

The cool thing about this is Bucs AC/DC-loving general manager Jason Licht told Adam Schein of SiriusXM NFL Radio last week that he believes the Bucs drafted guys they think could start for them to keep Tampa Bay in the playoffs.

As Joe wrote about the slurping from coast-to-coast over Cousins: the Dixie Chicks thought so much of him, they drafted a quarterback No. 8 overall.