Before the season, if Joe told you the Bucs’ offensive line would have given up 25 sacks by the time the calendar turned to 2016, then you would have had Joe drug-tested.

The Bucs arguably had the worst jailbreak of an offensive line last year and added two rookies, one from Division-III Hobart College. No one, not even the Bucs, thought their offensive line would be a top-five line.

But here we are, just hours before 2016 with one more game left, and the Bucs have the fourth-fewest sacks in the NFL — just 25. It really, really, really is a remarkable turnaround and one reason why America’s Quarterback, Jameis Winston, has excelled as a rookie.

But hold up! It is not all good news.

Jameis has taken a pounding, absorbing 100 quarterback hits, that’s fourth-most in the league. While Jameis may not be driven into the ground, he’s getting drilled.

Up comes Carolina with a punishing defense and Jameis may just get his jock knocked off Sunday. So Joe asked Bucs offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter how, while the sack numbers are great, can the offense limit the hits? As you can imagine, it’s a complex answer but Koetter is already working on it.

“That’s one of those things that is kind of a project for the offseason,” Koetter said. “We’ll do a study on where did all of those hits occur, how many were [Winston’s] own fault, because as you said sometimes – we call it ‘take what you need’ – sometimes in the pocket you step one way or the other or you step up to avoid an edge rusher or you avoid that first rusher, but if you step too far, the right guard might be thinking he’s doing a great job blocking his job over here, all of a sudden the quarterback moves and the right guard doesn’t know he’s right there so now he’s in trouble with the three-technique [defensive tackle] for example. “We do need to cut down the hits on Jameis. How we do it, that is something that will be an offseason project, I can’t give you a good answer on that today.”

That’s fair. As Koetter hinted, there are all sorts of variables, including Jameis himself possibly holding onto the ball a bit longer than he should. There are a lot of moving parts to this puzzle.

Remember: there are two rookies on the offensive line. Just like Jameis, Donovan Smith and Ali Marpet (who struggled a wee bit in pass blocking earlier in the year) should only improve.