Good guy Joey Johnston of the Tampa Tribune sat down with Bucs linebackers coach Joe Barry. In a wide-ranging interview, Johnston asked Barry about Bucs safety Jermaine Phillips being shifted to a linebacker.

Barrry admitted it was an experiment but the experiment is over.

Before that first minicamp, it was an experiment. Being truthful, even the first or second day of the minicamp, it was an experiment. But we’re through that, eight weeks into the offseason, and it’s not an experiment any more. Jermaine Phillips is a Will weakside linebacker. At first, we were saying maybe Flip Phillips could play a nickel Will linebacker. That’s how it started. We kept talking and said, “Well, what if we had him do it with the regular base defense on the field?” Now we’ve only had five minicamp practices and one OTA, but he has proven he can do it. It’s not an experiment any more.

Joe isn’t so sure about this move only because it dilutes what was the Bucs’ deepest element of the defense, its secondary, and may not even improve the linebacker corps. Besides, just how quickly, reliably can a 30-year old player learn a new position in the NFL?

And Joe still isn’t sold on Barry coming back. Why would you want to hire a guy who was responsible for one of the worst defensive teams in NFL history (Detroit)? Yeah, Joe knows he was part of the Bucs Super Bowl winning coaching staff. But how much of that was Barry being surrounded by great assistant coaches (Monte Kiffin, Rod Marinelli and Mike Tomlin)?