Put aside for a moment the big picture happiness regarding this 10-6 Bucs season for a moment, and you’re left with the agony of a team that choked away fourth quarter leads in two December home games and missed the playoffs because of it.

Oh, the pain Raheem Morris must be battling when the lights go out in his bedroom at night.

Speaking on the national Mike and Mike in the Morning show last week, Raheem explained that he expects that pain to drive the Bucs for 2011. Co-host Mike Golic asked Raheem what message he left the Bucs with last week.

“We talked about the ultimate hunger. You know, there’s no better hunger than what we set up for ourselves. You win 10 games; You’re not in the tournament. And you can go back and you can look at about four or five of our games and pick out one play and one snap from each game. And that could be the difference in every game,” Raheem said. “So you talked about going back and re-evaluting yourself and coming back and having a great offseason in order to prepare yourself to do this thing, despite all the labor agreements or whatever may happen. We gotta go out there and do that. There are no excuses.

“…Don’t listen to all our critics. Let’s just go out here and attack this thing the same way we did last year and go out and be ourselves again.”

Golic and co-host Mike Greenberg went on to relay a story about a chance meeting with Raheem at a Tampa restaurant last year. Both said they came away extremely impressed.

“Such an energetic good guy.You can’t help but rooting for him like crazy,” Greenberg said.

Golic advised Raheem and his coaches to hit a beach for a couple of weeks or do whatever they have to do to clear their heads, so they don’t kick themselves the entire offseason.