The Bucs' next move is up to the Glazers Imagine what it must have been like when Raheem Morris was called to the owner's office in January and offered the job as head coach of the Buccaneers. My goodness, the man had just been named defensive coordinator but had never actually had the experience of handling that responsibility during a game. Now he was asked to replace a head coach who had won a Super Bowl. What's he supposed to say? No thanks, I'm not ready? He took the job. We'll find out soon enough if he keeps it. The Bucs are in Seattle today for a game that is a bad alternative to just about anything, including yard work or battling at the mall. It's a clash of nobodies headed nowhere but home when the season ends three weeks from now. For Morris, though, these could be the three most important weeks of his coaching life. In hindsight, Morris was set up for failure - handed a team without the talent to compete and asked to work with coordinators whose philosophies were ill-suited to the players they had. While that may be a valid excuse, it hasn't helped ease the anger in town toward this team. After last week's dreary 26-3 loss to the Jets, Morris appears to be running out of time to prove he can handle the massive overhaul needed to get the Bucs back among contenders. It may not be fair, but business is business. We all know the quick fix for a lousy team is to fire the unpopular coach, even if he's not solely responsible for this mess. The Glazers are ultimately responsible for a large share of this fiasco, but I'm guessing they won't fire themselves. Players seem to like Raheem, for what that's worth. "Guys are still playing hard, guys are still responding. I feel like he still has the locker room," running back Cadillac Williams said. "For some reason, the win-loss column just isn't showing. As a team, we're young and ... I can't put all that blame on him." No one should. You start losing season tickets and sponsors in levels like the Bucs could see, though, and suddenly the only thing that matters is the bottom line. It also probably didn't help Morris that Bruce Allen took the job Thursday as general manager of the Washington Redskins. That saves the Glazers about $4 million they were paying their former GM. That money could go toward hiring a big-name coach and bring instant excitement back to the franchise, much the way Jon Gruden did when he first arrived. With games against New Orleans and Atlanta remaining after today, Morris is running out of time to make a strong argument to keep his job. You could even almost throw out the game against the Falcons as irrelevant if the Bucs lose today and next week at the Saints. I mean, how much would a single win in the season's final week really mean? Hardly anything about this season has gone the way the Bucs planned it. Now it looks like they're just making it up as they go along. The offensive line has been a mess, the power running game never materialized, and only recently has the defense begun to stabilize - after Morris took over as coordinator. Is that enough to earn Morris a second chance? Until last week, I thought it was. I thought that even at 1-15 he was safe. It's hard to tell a coach to develop a rookie quarterback for a team in transition and then hold him overly accountable for the record. I'm not so sure now, though. I'm not sure the economics of all those empty seats won't drown out any thoughts the Glazers may have of being patient. And frankly, even last week we saw more signs that Raheem holds an unstable hand on the wheel. Just a couple of weeks ago he said it was time to turn Josh Freeman loose at quarterback after keeping things simple in his initial starts. Eight interceptions and two games later, the mantra now is that Freeman has too much on his plate. It's just another flipflop in a season filled with them. The next move is up to the Glazers. While we wait to see what happens, I'm trying to imagine what it will be like next month if Raheem Morris gets called to the owner's office and told that things just didn't work out. Or, maybe they tell him he gets one more chance to prove the Glazers knew what they were doing when they hired him. If that happens, imagine something else. Given everything that's happened this year, imagine how they'd sell that to the public. Good luck with that one. Joe Henderson, The Tampa Tribune 20 December 2009