The man Buccaneers Ring of Honor general manager Jason Licht allowed behind the scenes of his 2020 NFL Draft decisions, a guy who for decades was catered to at One Buc Palace, is no fan of the current team.

Joe’s referring to former NFL super insider Peter King, who retired from NBC before the 2024 season but quickly decided he couldn’t stop lecturing the masses on football.

King is a regular on the Let’s Go! podcast/SiriusXM radio show with Jim Gray, Matthew Stafford and Maxx Crosby.

One week ago, before yesterday’s debacle against Carolina, King was hammering away at the Buccaneers. Joe didn’t transcribe and share it last week because, well, listening to King pontificate sends Joe to the toilet and Joe was trying to feel festive. But King’s national finger-wagging seems appropriate this morning.

King slapped around Baker Mayfield. “He had a great run through the first half of this season, and he is turning into a pumpkin now.”

Again, that was slow-talking King one week ago.

And then he came after Todd Bowles in multiple ways.

“I’ve got a problem with the defense as well, against a team that had been struggling mightily in the Atlanta Falcons,” King said. “You know, you give up 14 points or 15 points, whatever it was in the last 10 minutes of the game, they’re a mess. And I think when I hear a head coach talk like that after a game — head coaches, you’ve gotta take a deep breath when you go into that press conference room and Todd Bowles has been through it all. You gotta take a deep breath when you go in there and you have to swallow what you really wanna say.

“I believe he said that because I believe he wanted to talk directly to his team through the public. And he basically said to his team, ‘Listen, I’m not saying, hey, it starts with me — because I’ve done all I can. The coaches have done all we could. You know, at some point there’s enough talent here. You have to make the plays. You have to make stops on defense. Baker, you’ve gotta overcome this defense.

“To me, I just think that was almost a cry for help, you know, to his team by Todd Bowles.”

Solid assessment by King. Bowles was issuing a cry for help of sorts during his profane rant following the Bucs’ loss to Atlanta 11 days ago.

Sadly, Joe can’t find evidence that his players were listening.