Joe begins his day this beautiful Tuesday morning with a first, a bit of JoeBucsFan.com history:

To the best of Joe’s knowledge, albeit trying to think before his morning requisite supply of caffeine, covering nearly 14 months and some 3,300 posts, Joe has never linked to a John Romano article.

The streak has now been broken because the St. Petersburg Times scribe finally blasted a pitch out of the park. It also helped Romano’s cause that the premise of his column reinforces something Joe has been pounding home, specifically the past couple of weeks.

There… is… no… need… to… play… Josh… Freeman. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

The decision to force him into action just because the team is horrid beyond words is a gamble far too massive solely to pacify the impatient.

Joe has also pointed out by rushing Freeman, Raheem the Dream is commiting career suicide. Romano suggests Bucs general manager Mark Dominik’s career is also in Freeman’s hands. Romano picks it up from there.

The point is that Dominik and Morris cannot be swayed by emotions in this matter. An 0-7 record should not matter. Newspaper headlines and radio callers should not matter. Empty seats at Raymond James Stadium should not matter.

The only consideration should be whether Freeman is ready. That’s it. And the only people who can make that determination are the coaches and executives who have been monitoring his every move for the past six months.

It is their necks, so it has to be their call.

If they doubt that, they might want to ask Bruce Coslet how his career worked out after starting Akili Smith in his fifth game as a pro. Or they might want to check with Marty Mornhinweg, who put Joey Harrington in the lineup in his third game. Ask Dom Capers about David Carr or Mike Nolan about Alex Smith. The roadside is filled with NFL coaches whose careers were dinged by first-round quarterback flops.

Also remember that for whatever twisted reason, Raheem the Dream decided to let offensive coordinator Greg Olson revert to Chucky’s playbook in the weeks after Raheem the Dream fired offensive coordinator Jeff Jagodzinski.

So Freeman — and the entire offense — spent all of the offseason and preseason preparing for a run-first, throw-deep offense, only to have that plan scrapped before the first month of the season was finished and decided to go toward a Chuck(y)-and-Duck offense.

Chucky’s playbook was also so complex, it often took veteran quarterbacks two years to fully digest it. Imagine a rookie trying to grasp that in just a handful of weeks?

Yet another reason Joe prays Freeman doesn’t start until 2010.