Freeman is climbing fast, despite loss Martin Fennelly, The Tampa Tribune, published 16 November 2009 For starters Sunday, he looked every bit the rattled rookie. He could barely hold onto the football. He was stripped on sacks, fumbled, bungled. He messed up. Josh Freeman was miserable, and so was the Bucs' offense, save for the now right-footed legend named Connor Barth. Then came the rest of the game. For the second time in as many weeks, or in as many of all his NFL starts, Josh Freeman aimed to bring the Bucs from behind, this time in his first road start, against the Dolphins at fabled Land Shark Stadium. We got your shark, right here. "He is the one," Bucs tight end Kellen Winslow said. "The last drive we had, he got real hyped up and everybody got real excited, like, 'Yeah, here he is.'" Sunday, Freeman threw a 33-yard touchdown to Maurice Stovall to begin the fourth quarter. Then he seemed to put the game away as he ran, passed and helped pace the Bucs to the go-ahead touchdown and a one-point lead with about a minute left. In his second start? All that was missing was the happy ending. The Bucs defense gave it away. Miami marched 77 yards and won 25-23 on a field goal. But even in a dejected Bucs locker room, people sensed they might have something here at quarterback, something very real. "He's definitely climbing that learning curve," Bucs cornerback Ronde Barber said. "That's two weeks in a row. He has such poise. Nothing fazes him." Behind Freeman, the Bucs nearly overcame a 13-point hole. They nearly overcame one of the more putrid officiating calls you'll ever see, that Michael Clayton catch that was ruled an interception and set up a Miami touchdown. Freeman led the way, even after his lost first half. "The first half was disastrous," Bucs coach Raheem Morris said. "He did everything you could do wrong. You're talking about fumbled snaps ... miscommunication ... just rookie mistakes that he's going to make." "I think I cost us a sack or two," Freeman said. "I wasn't quite stepping up like I needed to. I didn't have that sense of urgency." Then there was the rest of the game. The kid was Captain Urgency. "When he got the ball with some clock left, that whole sideline felt he was going to do it," Morris said. "And he did." Freeman all but shrugged at such compliments. "I'm the starting quarterback, and the way I look at it is that when I'm on the field, you gotta do it. You have no choice." Just like in his starting debut in the win against Green Bay, the rookie didn't flinch when things went wrong - or truly mattered. "We're not worried about him at all," Winslow said. It's all about the learning curve. During the week, former Bucs quarterback and battering ram Jeff Garcia left a message with Bucs offensive coordinator Greg Olson, giving him grief about the 6-foot-5, 248-pound Freeman sliding for a 4-yard gain on a third-and-5. Olson played Garcia's message. Sunday, Olson again reminded Freeman: Go get 'em, big guy. "Coach Olson definitely challenged me to throw my body around a little more and do some things running the ball," Freeman said. There was no sliding, no holding back. So it was that, on what should have been the game-winning drive, Freeman began it by scrambling for 14 yards. He didn't blink. On the previous Bucs drive, on third down, Freeman floated a perfect ball for Stovall inside the Miami 5. Only Stovall dropped it. It would have doomed the Bucs if not for Quincy Black's interception, which set the Bucs up for one last shot, the one Freeman began with that scramble. "He doesn't get rattled," Clayton said. Freeman didn't see a learning curve. "We found a way to move on," he said. "I wouldn't say it was really any sort of growth from the first half to the second half. It was just moving on." Next up are the undefeated Saints. On we move.