Tampa Bay Bucs: Should Raheem Morris Fire Himself as Defensive Coordinator?

After a promising 2010 season that saw the Tampa Bay Buccaneers go 10-6, the 2011 campaign has been an utter fiasco, with today's 48-16 pasting at the hands of the Carolina Panthers, putting the cherry on top of a 4-11 nightmare in which the Buccaneers have been winless since Week 6.

There's plenty of blame to be spread around for the Buccaneers' complete and utter collapse, but a large portion of that must be reserved for the defense, which ranked 30th in the NFL in total defense, pass defense and scoring defense and 26th in the league in run defense before getting steamrolled by Carolina quarterback Cam Newton and the Panthers today.

One would think that head coach Raheem Morris would be furious with his defense and the innumerable lapses it has had all season, and that a great deal of his fury would be focused on the poor soul that serves as Tampa Bay's defensive coordinator.

Problem is, Raheem Morris is Tampa Bay's defensive coordinator.

The Buccaneers defense was supposed to be an up-and-coming unit entering the 2011 season, set to build on their ranking of 17th in the National Football League a season ago, after adding players such as defensive linemen Da'Quan Bowers and Adrian Clayborn and linebacker Mason Foster in last April's draft. But at this point to say that the defense has backslid would be a gross understatement, and after today's debacle it appears that the bottom has fallen out.

Given how poorly the team has performed this season Morris may be lucky to keep any of his jobs, but if he wants to truly show the Glazer family that he's serious about turning things around in Tampa then his first order of business after the holiday weekend should be to call himself into his office and relieve himself of his duties as defensive coordinator.