Joe is a boring guy. He doesn’t do fantasy football; he doesn’t gamble. Joe loves, craves football for the pure joy of the game. Joe doesn’t need to have cash riding on a game to get worked up for football and doesn’t need to play fantasy sports to force feed him to like a game.

And yes, Joe has been known to watch Hawaii football at 2 a.m. on his DirecTV college football package. Not often mind you (usually by that time the multiple beers Joe has inhaled throughout the day finally catch up with Joe), but it has happened from time to time.

One thing Joe does do is that he is a sports radioholic. Joe falls asleep listening to sports radio (SiriusXM NFL Radio usually or perhaps Sirius College Football radio) and wakes up to sports radio (if there is a commercial, Joe will quickly turn to the King of All Media, Howard Stern).

As you can imagine, if it is a Saturday and Joe is not watching college football or at a college football game, Joe is listening to his good friend Justin Pawlowski of WDAE-AM 620, if the station can somehow find the time to squeeze in his show on a football Saturday.

Justin was not a fan of Barrett Ruud, to put it mildly. Joe can still hear to this day Justin, almost yelling, “Would you shed a freaking block?” when the subject of the former Bucs middle linebacker came up.

Joe doesn’t think he will hear Justin say that about Bucs rookie linebacker Mason Foster this year. Because Foster told Joe he learned how to shed blocks in college.

Foster took some time to chat with Joe and other reporters after Sunday’s Bucs practice.

JoeBucsFan: What has been the biggest obstacle you have had to overcome coming from an outside linebacker at the University of Washington to a starting NFL middle linebacker?

Mason Foster: Probably the playbook. Physically, it’s definitely tougher and faster but you have to be on top of everything because you are the quarterback of the defense. Here on the NFL level you are playing with guys who have been on the NFL level for a couple of years now. They are looking at you now to make the checks so you have to be on top of everything and make sure you know what everybody is doing. I think I have adjusted well but I am still learning. Now I am trying to hit it every day as hard as I can.

Joe: This year rookies have been behind the eight ball because, in a normal year, rookies had months to learn the playbook whereas this year (because of the asinine lockout), you have just a matter of days. Can you talk about that?

Foster: Yeah, it’s like getting thrown in the middle of something where everybody else knows what they are doing. You are coming in from scratch. But luckily, I was well-coached at “U-Dub.” We had a pro linebacker coach [Mike Cox] come in and coach me the last two years. So I was ready. It’s different terminology but at the same time you have older guys like Geno [Hayes] and Quincy [Black] and Adam Hayward that will help you out. It makes things a little easier and they have helped me out.

Joe: Is there an element that you learned from Cox that you have been able to use here?

Foster: Definitely, how to shed blocks and how to use your hands to beat blockers. That is something that he really harped on that has really helped me out here.

Now this is beyond interesting to Joe. Doing a bit of research on Cox, it shows he was a defensive line coach as well for the Rams. What is the biggest thing defensive linemen have to use to get rid of blocks? Handwork.

So Joe is inclined to believe Foster is well-schooled with how to throw off offensive linemen in order to get to the ball, given the fact he was coached up by a former defensive line coach.

Joe’s just geeked to learn this.

When another reporter asked Foster what other obstacles were in his transformation from a college linebacker to the NFL, Foster laughed and said, “It is definitely hotter here than it is in Seattle for one. That is the biggest difference.”