"I started to ask a question Monday of Buccaneers coach Raheem Morris, but he answered before I could finish.

The subject was tight end Kellen Winslow, and how fit and strong he has looked in the early days of training camp. I started to ask if it had anything to do with the fact …

"… that he didn't have surgery in the offseason," Morris said.

Well, yeah. What about that?

"That's weird. I just thought of that," Morris said. "We kind of talked about it but it got forgotten about with all the other stuff going on. It's a very interesting fact."

That's one way of putting it. Winslow has had a reported seven knee operations, including microfracture surgery to repair damage after crashing his motorcycle in 2005. Since coming to the Bucs in 2009, insiders say the work Winslow does just to get his knee ready for games each week is mind-boggling.

"It's hard to say you can tell a difference in him because when Kellen goes, he goes. When it hurts him or aches, I'll hold him out," Morris said. "But when he's healthy, you can definitely see the clear-cut difference and right now he's really healthy."

The knee has been a touchy subject before for Winslow, but not so much now.

"I just have to live with it, basically," he said with a shrug after Monday's morning walk-through at One Buc Place.

To do that, he "manages" the knee (his word) through the weekly rigors that lead up to a game. Further surgery probably wouldn't do much to help the joint anyway, so it's a matter of deciding how much pain is worth the cost of continuing to play.

Pain hasn't beaten him yet.

He has been the Bucs' leading receiver in his two seasons here, including 66 catches for 730 yards and five touchdowns last year. The catches were seventh-best among tight ends in the league, while the receiving yards ranked sixth.

That gives you an idea how valuable Winslow is to quarterback Josh Freeman and the Bucs' offense. So if he needs a little slack to be ready on Sunday, he gets that."