After struggling in his first few years in the NFL, Bucs cornerback Phillip Buchanon has blossomed into a solid player.

When Phillip Buchanon came out of “The U,” he was expected to be another in a long line of top notch Hurricane cornerbacks. But that didn’t happen. Instead, he was considered a bust. After being a first round pick by Oakland, he was cut and didn’t fare much better with Houston.

But Rick Brown of the Lakeland Ledger, apparently finished slurping Son of Bob, notes that Buchanon, now 27, may have found his niche with the Bucs and is starting to live up to expectations.

“I’m in a better environment,” he said. “I never figured myself to have a problem with tackling. The situations that I was put in – it was down, a lot of losing, a lot of things going on behind closed doors that people didn’t know about. It was kind of depressing.”

The way Buchanon has blossomed with the Bucs, in addition to Tanard Jackson, a healthy Sabby Piscitelli as well as the addition of Aqib Talib via the draft, Joe considers the Bucs to have the best defensive backfield in the NFL.

Oh yeah, isn’t there still some guy by the name of Ronde Barber playing, too?