Yesterday Joe noted how Raheem the Dream should insert Maurice Stovall into the lineup because we pretty much already know what Michael Clayton can do — or to be more exact, what he can’t do — but we’re still learning about Stovall.

In his Tuesday column on SI.com, King all but wrote the same thing. He didn’t mention Clayton or Stovall but he noted that the rest of the season should be one long tryout for younger players for the 2010 season.

Raheem Morris has his Bucs in perspective. It’s way too early to say they’ve turned their team around, but the one thing Morris knows in the wake of Tampa Bay’s 38-28 upset of the Packers is it’s too early to draw any conclusions.

This is a nice building block,” he told me, “but we’ve got a long way to go. A long way to go. The thing about this team is, they practice passionately. I’ve told them excuses won’t be tolerated, and they haven’t given any.”

I asked him if he’d started looking at the standings, and feared being another 1976 Bucs team — or the 2008 Lions. Tampa Bay was the last winless team in football before Sunday. “Never,” he said. “I didn’t worry about that. I worried about our effort, and it was always there.”

The Bucs now have to make sure they protect rookie quarterback Josh Freeman, who showed confidence and a live arm despite having a couple of frenetic plays against Green Bay. He’s the future. Tampa’s gone from being the third-oldest team in football to the fifth-youngest in one year, and the record shouldn’t be the goal. Player development should be.

It humbles Joe to know Peter King is on the same wavelength as Joe.