Frankly, Joe hopes and prays guard Aaron Sears is on the road to good health and can return to the Bucs ready to play.

But his mysterious, “private matter” absence from Bucs OTA practices keeps getting more bizarre by the day.

To the newspaper’s credit, the St. Pete Times reports Sears participated in an Alabama high school football camp on Thursday while his teammates gathered to sweat their butts off in Tampa.

We’ve since learned Sears was in his hometown of Russellville, Ala. today where he participated in a youth football camp. Russellville High coach Doug Goodwin confirmed Sears’ appearance, but he was unaware of Sears’ situation with the Bucs and said he didn’t observe anything out of the ordinary, including any apparent injury.

“He was walking around and smiling,” Goodwin said of Sears. “He was here strictly as a favor to us. I couldn’t speculate as far as something being wrong with him.”

Normally Sears’ absence from OTA  practices would be very small-time news. But that’s out the window now that Raheem The Dream was cornered by the MSM on Thursday and said Sears’ absence is a deeply “private matter.”

Joe hates to speculate about this, but it’s very hard not to.

Sears obviously doesn’t have some sort of communicable disease, otherwise he wouldn’t be around kids at a football camp. So that leaves concussion effects, another serious medical issue, or a mental problem.

Best case scenario, Sears is still broken up over the loss of Chucky and Bill Muir and needs to change counselors to get past his depression.