As it stands right now, Dirk Johnson is the new starting punter for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That became evident on Monday when the Bucs placed Josh Bidwell on injured reserve due to severe hip pain stemming from Tuesday's practice. Bidwell, 33, injured the hip on Tuesday during the special teams portion of practice and experienced painful swelling Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. "We wanted to give Josh a couple days and let him see how he felt," said Bucs general manager Mark Dominik. "We had a specialist take a look at it as well. We wanted to cover all our grounds because he's a great punter for us, but in the end we felt it was most important talking with Josh and talking with Coach [Raheem] Morris that it was a decision we had to make. So we went ahead to have him get surgery and get scoped so that resulted in us having to put him on injured reserve this weekend. "His hip started flaring up in terms of pain. I don't want to get too specific in terms of injuries. Our beliefs and thoughts are once we get it scoped it should be pain-free and go from there." Source: PewterReport.com
