“Todd, you tell those backup MFers if they don’t start busting their tails I’ll have the SOBs push me around in this f’ing cart.”

Ex-linebacker Emmanuel Acho of FS1 ranted against Giants coach Joe Judge yesterday, saying that if a player is a professional, he won’t — or shouldn’t — need motivation.

So this makes Joe start to wonder about the second-string Bucs defense.

Many throughout NFL land believe the Bucs will have one of the stingiest defenses. The front seven is certainly gnarly AF. There is potential in the secondary, certainly.

But what happens if dudes go down — and you know that’s just a matter of time? The early returns are not good as Bucs coaches had to put their collective feet down on the backups yesterday.

Basically, the second-string defense was loafing, Arians thought. They weren’t flying to the football. And in Arians’ eyes there is no bigger football sin than loafing. Granted, Arians doesn’t want guys getting beat up but that doesn’t mean half-arsing it in practice either, he said.

“It happened [Monday], we corrected it,” Arian said. “Two times becomes a habit, so they’re still outside running, and running to the ball.

“Whether you thought somebody tagged him or not, you’ve got to run to the ball. That’s what our defense is built on – it’s hustle and speed. We’re going to break that habit really fast.”

Is that why the Bucs went out and signed a backup defensive lineman, Kyle Love? Is Arians about ready to give someone the Vernon Hargreaves treatment of tossing them off the team for serial loafing?

Arians added that the loafing was the kind of thing that would have been fixed in spring practices but there weren’t any.

When the first-string defense was on the field yesterday, the thing that really jumped out to Joe was the gang-tackling, especially from the left side of the defense. Dudes sure were getting to the ball in a hurry.

Joe thinks the most underrated element of a good defense is gang-tackling.