Fighting rat poison.

There are very specific times when Joe and the local pen and mic club are granted access to the Bucs’ locker room during the week.

That time is usually around 1 p.m., give or take a few minutes for about 45 minutes to an hour.

Inside the locker room, right in the middle facing the lockers of the offensive line, the cornerbacks, the running backs and the defensive linemen are two TVs.

Think of the lockers for those groups as two U-shaped locker room cul-de-sacs. One TV faces each U-shaped open end. The rows of the lockers are like someone welded two horseshoes together with the open end of each horseshoe facing a TV.

Often one TV is on NFL Network but not always (if there is a college basketball game on, that will be piped in). Sometimes the same TV will be tuned to a rebroadcast of a hollering show, “Last Take” or “Stay in Bed.” But usually, it’s NFL Network.

Always, the “Pat McAfee Show” is on one of the two TVs.

Sometimes, a player or two will watch but very few. If players have some downtime between practice and meetings or weight room sessions or massages, they are almost universally at their lockers, on their phones texting or surfing social media. Maybe playing a game.

But if there is a Bucs subject on one of the two TVs or a Bucs player is on the McAfee show (separately, Joe recalls Tristan Wirfs and Baker Mayfield making a live appearance), that certainly gets the locker room’s attention.

So to say the Bucs don’t notice the outside noise of the sports world is, well, sort of wishful thinking.

Bucs coach Todd Bowles last week flatly stated its all white noise to the team.

“We didn’t listen when we were losing,” Bowles said. “We’re not listening now that we’re winning, so that’s not going to be a big deal.”

Well, it seems the team was listening to the outside noise, or paying closer attention to what was on the two TVs when the Bucs were winning in the early weeks of the season.

And all the praise heaped on the Bucs — what Nick Saban derisively refers to as “rat poison” — got in the players’ heads. That’s what Bucs outside linebacker YaYa Diaby told Joe last week.

Joe asked Diaby if he’s noticed that the national hollering shows and talking heads have really jumped on the Bucs’ bandwagon in the wake of the Bucs’ curb-stomping of the Chargers.

Diaby dismissed that because he didn’t want a repeat.

“They did the same thing at the beginning of the season and we let that get to us,” Diaby said of all the praise the hollering shows gave the Bucs after they beat the Lions in their own Michigan den.

“So this time around, we have to keep our composure. Stay on task. Keep doing what we have been doing and focus on ourselves.”

After the Bucs began buying the hype, along came the arse-kicking by the Broncos to set the Bucs straight.

If that result wasn’t enough to grab their attention, Lavonte David made sure the point was driven home when he ripped his teammates a new poop chute after that loss.

“We started off real good,” Diaby said of buying the national hype. “Then we got to Denver and we let one get away.

“So we have to focus on the main thing. Finish [the season] the way we want it to finish.”

Diaby told Joe that Bucs veterans are on the young guys’ cases regularly to stay focused and ignore the white noise.

“All the veteran guys,” Diaby said are preaching focus. “Baker, Lavonte, all of the guys. They [tell] us to stay on task, focus on us.”

Has Diaby and his young teammates learned? Joe asked him about the Chargers game, and Diaby only politely mentioned the win.

“Great win, great win, great win,” Diaby said. And then he clammed up. “It’s behind us. Time to move on. Off to the next.

“Still have three important games we have to finish and put ourselves into the best position and go to the playoffs.”

So, Joe asked Diaby if he was onto Dallas. He gave Joe a simple one-word answer.

“Yup.”