Mark Dominik said linebacker is the Bucs strongest position on the football field. Who knew? ... Joe is in stunned disbelief.

Bucs general manager Mark Dominik sat down for chicken wings and an interview with electronic media czar J.P. Peterson of 1010 a.m. on Wednesday.

Joe has transcribed some of the more interesting audio from Dominik’s 30-minute interview.

Among the gems, Dominik says the Bucs are spending big money, and Josh Freeman is best left on the bench to start the season.

J.P. Peterson: You got all the money to spend, why aren’t you doing it with [Barrett Ruud].

Mark Dominik: “I understand the frustration [of fans]. … I still see (Ruud) as a longterm Buccaneer and one of the leaders of our defense …The misnomer is that we started free agency with over $80 million in cap room, and we’ve spent almost $60 million of cap room. So we’re not a football team that stands pat and doesn’t do anything. We’ve got players, obviously Kellen Winslow which was a big contract that everybody talked about. But Derrick Ward. Keeping Michael Clayton. Franchising Antonio Bryant. Signing a couple of quarterbacks. We’ve spent some money, but we’re also holding back some of the money that you talk about in terms of having cap room available for the Barrett Ruuds, for the other players we’ve obviously identified on this football team that are guys we want on this football team for 10 years not just four or five.”

Peterson: Tell me about the new strength and conditioning coach, Kurtis Shultz.

Dominik: “…Part of the two things that we felt we really needed to improve on the football team were core strength and body fat. Those were two areas that we really felt like hurt us down the stretch. Maybe hurt our condidtioning down the stretch. …[The new plan] has been a lot of fun for players. We’ve got players coming back. Ronde Barber made a lot of the offseason program. He hadn’t been part of the offseason program in a long time because he had done his own thing and kept himself in shape. I think he bought in to what Kurtis is doing, and that’s been important for us.”

Dominik on Kellen Winslow: “He’s brought a competitive fire to the offense that we haven’t seen around here very much.”

Dominik on Josh Freeman: “With the first team, he’d get two maybe out of 12 reps. He took advantage of the little bit of time he got and he turned everybody’s head like you would expect him to do as the 17th pick in the draft. The longterm plan, I see a guy, it doesn’t hurt for him to sit a little bit. Let these other guys really battle out for the quarterback spot. Let this young guy develop as a quarterback we want to talk about for the next 10 or 12 years.”

Dominik on Arron Sears: “Right now I’m not sure whether Arron will be back or not because of the personal issues he’s going through. …Right now it’s a little early to say. We’ve still got a month before training camp. We’ll see what happens.”

Dominik on linebackers: “It’s probably our strongest position on our football team, suprisingly I bet to a lot of our fans. That our depth and our talent is pretty good there. So that’s a good battleground to watch during training camp if you want to see some real competition.”