Bucs Beat: Morris should be rewarded for turnaround season

I was wrong. Way wrong. Not as wrong as Sports Illustrated Senior Writer Peter King, but wrong nonetheless.

I had the Bucs winning five games this season, give or take a couple. Even if you give them a couple, that's only seven wins. The Bucs have won eight with three games to play. Like I said, I was wrong.

I wasn't alone. Outside of former Bucs quarterback Shaun King and the number crunchers at FootballOustsiders.com, few had the Bucs winning more than five or six games.

King predicted a 2-14 season.

For so many to have been so wrong, someone had to do something awfully right.

No matter how this season ends - and when you consider the recent rash of injuries, it has the potential to end badly - Raheem Morris has done an exceptional job as the coach of the Buccaneers this season. The success he's had molding this team into an entertaining playoff contender is worthy of votes for the NFL's coach of the year award, if not the award itself. It's also made him worthy of a contract extension.

There's no reason to make Morris squirm through the coming offseason. Sure, he's got another year left on the deal he signed a little more than a year ago, but that's a club option.

The club should pick up that option now, or soon after the season ends, and throw another couple of years onto it for good measure. Morris, who so many seemed to think was in over his head a year ago, has earned it.

You don't often say that about a coach with an 11-18 career record, but if Morris can do what he's done this year with a collection of kids and castoffs, think what he could do with a more experienced and talent-laden roster.

Some will be thinking about that next summer. Though the Bucs won't necessarily be the talk of the NFL, there will be talk about them as a rising team to watch in 2011. Morris is a big reason for that.

He has a way with players young and old that is truly unique. We're nearly two years into his reign and have yet to see a player quit on him under any circumstance. That's rare.

So is winning and staying alive in a playoff race when you've lost eight starters to injury or suspension. Morris has done that, too, and deserves to be rewarded. So does his boss, general manager Mark Dominik.

Like Morris, Dominik has some unique qualities, not the least of which is an almost uncanny ability to find starting-caliber players at the bottom of other team's rosters. Shelton Quarles, Jovan Haye, Donald Penn, LeGarrette Blount, Ted Larsen, James Lee - those are just a few who became Bucs starters after Dominik culled them from the scrap heap or some other club.

What Dominik does best is build up the bottom of a roster with players worthy of a spot at the top, and his effort this season is worthy of NFL executive of the year honors.

Of course, Dominik's work would all be for naught if Morris didn't trust him or share the same philosophy on how to build a team. This partnership is working and already has proven worthy of an extended service agreement.

At some point in the near future, that would be the right call for Bucs ownership to make, just like hiring Dominik and Morris - once so chastised by the impatient and short-sighted - was the right call.

There's no denying that now.

If members of the Glazer family have proven anything during their 16 years as Bucs owners, it's that they know how to hire a coach. They certainly didn't miss on Tony Dungy, who turned the franchise around. And they didn't miss on Jon Gruden, who finally won this town a Super Bowl.

From the looks of things, they didn't miss on Morris either.