Mike Williams, the leading rookie receiver in the NFL, has been everything the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had hoped for: Dynamic, reliable, productive and capable of the occasional highlight-reel touchdown.

You can add resilient to that list, as well.

Williams has played in all 12 of the Buccaneers' games so far and, along with tight end Kellen Winslow, are the only players with at least one reception in every contest.  He has scored in seven different games and never gone three straight outings without a touchdown.  He did all of this despite a midseason foot injury that occasionally hampered him on the practice field.

And now it looks like the ultra-competitive rookie will be able to overcome a knee ailment to be on the field again this Sunday against the Washington Redskins.

Williams was held out of practice on Thursday, the most intense day of work during the week, due to knee soreness.  Given his 51 catches for 760 yards and seven scores this season – all team highs – that became a significant concern for the Buccaneers.  But Williams returned to practice on Friday, was not limited on the field and is now considered probable for Sunday's game at FedExField.

"He was full-participation today and he went out there and played well," said Head Coach Raheem Morris of Friday's practice.  "We've got to go see how long it can hold up and get him into the game."

The Buccaneers did add two players to their injury report on Friday, and both are considered questionable for the game: defensive end Tim Crowder (shoulder) and linebacker Niko Koutouvides (ankle).  Crowder has taken over as the Buccaneers' starting left end since opening-day starter Kyle Moore was lost to his own shoulder ailment.  Morris said the fourth-year player finished Sunday's game against Atlanta with a sore shoulder and aggravated it somewhat with a hard practice on Thursday.  Crowder was given Friday's practice off but Morris hopes he'll be able to play by the weekend.  If not, the Buccaneers will once again look to a young reserve to step up.

"You've got Mike Bennett and you've also got Alex Magee," said Morris.  "Those guys are interchangeable.  They do different things and they go out there and play well."

Linebacker Quincy Black (ankle) is also listed as questionable on the injury report but he showed progress on Friday by participating fully in practice after being held out the first two days of the week.  The Bucs also have two other players who, like Williams, are probable: Winslow (knee) and linebacker Dekoda Watson (hamstring).

The Buccaneers have recently lost a handful of players to the almost inevitable sting of the injury bug, including two starters on the offensive line (Davin Joseph and Jeff Faine) and two in the secondary (Cody Grimm and Aqib Talib).  However, the continued turnover of the roster this season has left the Bucs with a 53-man squad in December that is relatively fresh for the stretch run.

"That's the great part about having a young football team," said Morris.  "There's no fall-off.  They know it's a war of attrition.  They're a bunch of young guys.  They're just happy they didn't get eliminated from the BCS, most of them.  Now they've got a chance to step out there and win.  We're just fighting for a chance to qualify to be among the elite in our league.

"We've had a bunch of guys come up, so it hasn't been a constant [grind] for really any of them except for Gerald [McCoy] and I guess Mike Williams.  We've watched Arrelious Benn get better through the process.  We watched Cody Grimm emerge and then go down.  We've seen all these guys either come up and then go down, or just get their opportunities.  Right now Corey Lynch is in his second game and he's as fresh as you can be.  We've got a bunch of different people moving in, like Larsen.  I haven't seen a rookie wall hit."

The Redskins' injury report is 12 men long, 11 of which were designated as questionable on Friday.  Among those 11 are nine players who are listed as starters on this week's depth chart: linebackers Lorenzo Alexander (hamstring) and Brian Orakpo (ankle), defensive end Kedric Golston (elbow/groin), safeties LaRon Landry (Achilles) and Kareem Moore (ankle/biceps), cornerback Carlos Rogers (hamstring), wide receiver Santana Moss (knee), center Casey Rabach (knee) and tackle Trent Williams (shoulder).

However only four players were limited in Redskins' practice on Friday – Landry, Moore, Rogers and kick returner Brandon Banks (knee) – and none were held out completely.  That was actually a positive step for Landry and Rogers, each of whom had missed practice on both Wednesday and Thursday.  Landry is trying to return from a three-game absence while Rogers has missed two of the last three contests.  Torain, who has also missed the last three games, practiced fully on both Thursday and Friday.

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Playoff Race Update

The Buccaneers lost a chance to vault back into the thick of the NFC South division race last Sunday when Atlanta rallied in the fourth quarter for a 28-24 victory at Raymond James Stadium.  Obviously, the loss didn't help Tampa Bay's efforts in the Wild Card race, either, but it was far from a death blow.

In fact, the Bucs still sit just a game behind the current placeholder of the sixth spot in the NFC playoff standings, and with four weeks to go that obviously leaves the Buccaneers with a lot of room to maneuver.

Here's a look at the current standings in the NFC South and the NFC overall:

The Buccaneers will play three teams on that chart over the final four weeks: Washington this Sunday, Seattle in Week 16 and New Orleans in Week 17.  Those first two matchups for the Buccaneers will be more a matter of keeping pace with the teams above them, as the Seahawks and especially the Redskins are real long shots in the Wild Card race.  The season finale at New Orleans, on the other hand, could conceivably be a matter of two teams battling for a Wild Card spot.

For that to be a possibility, the Buccaneers need two things for certain: They need to beat the Saints in that final game and they need the Saints to lose at Atlanta the week before.  If those two outcomes occur, both the Bucs and the Saints will finish with 3-3 records within the division, which is a critical part of the picture for Tampa Bay.

That's because the first two tiebreakers between two teams in the same division are:

1. Head-to-head record. This would be 1-1 between the Bucs and Saints, and therefore not in play.

2. Division record. If it's 3-3 for both the Bucs and Saints, we move on to…

3. Common games. Again, this scenario presupposes the above two results, so the two teams six games against division foes would be a wash.  That would leave eight other common opponents by the end of the season: Arizona, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Francisco and Seattle.  At the moment, the Buccaneers are 5-2 against those teams, with Seattle still to go.  New Orleans is 4-2 with St. Louis and Baltimore still to go.  Tampa Bay's advantages are wins over the Cardinals and Browns, both of whom beat the Saints, while the Saints have a win over Pittsburgh, which beat the Buccaneers.  Perhaps the key game in this group is New Orleans at Baltimore in Week 15; the Ravens already beat the Buccaneers, so the Saints could even up the common game standings with a win in that one.

The next three tiebreakers, if necessary, are conference record, strength of victory and strength of schedule.

Obviously, the Bucs race with the Saints isn't happening in a vacuum.  The Giants and the Packers have to be caught, as well, and they're actually slightly more in reach, at 8-4 each.  The Giants final four games are at Minnesota, vs. Philadelphia, at Green Bay and at Washington.  The Packers finish up with this schedule: at Detroit, at New England, vs. the Giants and vs. Chicago.

If the Buccaneers wind up in tiebreaker situations with either of those teams (or both), the first criteria is head-to-head games, which is not applicable, and the second is conference record.  Both the Giants and the Packers currently have a slight edge over the Buccaneers in that department.  The next tiebreaker is common opponents, as long as there are at least four of them.  The Bucs do have four common opponents with the Giants (Carolina, Detroit, Seattle and Washington) and four with the Packers (Atlanta, Detroit, San Francisco and Washington).  The next tiebreaker after that is strength of victory.

Of course, even without including Seattle, Minnesota and Washington, that's still four teams fighting for two Wild Card spots (the races in the North and East could replace the Packers and the Giants with the Bears and the Eagles), and the Buccaneers currently have the fourth-best record in that group.  That means all of the above tiebreaking scenarios will quickly become moot if the Buccaneers fail to mount a fairly substantial winning streak in the final quarter of the season.

**

Sudden Improvement

A double-digit win season is still within Tampa Bay's sights in 2010, and that would be a very impressive achievement given the team's 3-13 season in 2009.

The Bucs have already more than doubled its win total from a year before, with four to play, but of course they have their sights set much higher.  If they can complete their "Race to 10," it would produce the single biggest turnaround in franchise history.

Tampa Bay actually has a history pretty rich in quick turnarounds, beginning with their original "Worst to First" in 1978-79, a feat that was much rarer at the time.  The Bucs went from 5-11 in '78, just their third year of existence, to 10-6 in '79 en route to the NFC Championship Game.

There was also a four-game improvement from 1996-97 (6-10 to 10-6) and a five-game rise from 2006-07 (4-12 to 9-7).  But the franchise record in that category occurred in 2005, when the team followed a 5-11 campaign in 2004 with an 11-5 season and another division title.

The Bucs could break that record in 2010 with three more victories in the last four weeks.  That would turn a 3-13 campaign into a 10-6 season and produce a seven-game improvement.

A turnaround of that magnitude from one season to the next isn't particularly common in the NFL, though it has been known to happen.  Since the season expanded to 16 games in 1978 (and discounting the 1982 season that was shortened to nine games by a strike), there have been four occasions in which a team went from a season of three or fewer wins immediately to a season of 10 or more victories.  They were:

• Miami Dolphins, 2007-08: 1-15 to 11-5
• New Orleans Saints, 2005-06: 3-13 to 10-6
• New Orleans Saints, 1999-2000: 3-13 to 10-6
• Indianapolis Colts, 1998-99: 3-13 to 13-3