TAMPA --

Kellen Winslow, like Tanard Jackson before him, has failed the Greg Schiano Buccaneer Man sniff test.

Is it really surprising. Is it a bad thing?

No and no.

Winslow is gone. Maybe the final straw was him skipping offseason stuff at Bucs headquarters. That is a mortal mistake with the new head coach. It seems real Buccaneer Men don't blow off anything.

I can't blame Schiano for doing it his way. I can't blame the Bucs for dumping Winslow, even if he's 28 and his replacement, former Colts tight end Dallas Clark, will soon be 33.

Kellen Winslow caught 218 footballs for the Bucs, 12 for touchdowns. The team's glorious 2011 Season in Review (Did these guys really go 4-12?) raves about K2's many deeds, and there are some.

But mostly his stay here was remarkably unmemorable.

How many Winslow moments really stood out? I mean, his drops were bigger than most of his grabs. It reminded me, all of it, of the season Keyshawn caught like 700 balls — and one TD. Much ado …

Winslow was overrated here, never elite, never the force he was supposed to be, never that game-changer. Bucs GM Mark Dominik paid for elite with that nutty contract, which at the time made Winslow the highest-paid tight end in world history.

What difference did he make? He had 218 catches and it's as if he was never here. I give him high marks, given past injuries, for the way he got himself ready to play on game day, but Winslow was a 28-year-old man playing on surgically repaired knees.

K2 was never the truly disruptive locker room force some feared, though I'm sure he whispered in Josh Freeman's ear about being open every play (though he wasn't). Hey, I never had a problem with the man.

Just the same, we used to laugh inside, hard, when Dominik or former coach Raheem Morris talked about Winslow being a senior leader.

That was never going to happen.

True, if this is the acid test for Freeman, he just lost the man who has been his favorite target. But now there is Vincent Jackson, and draft pick Doug Martin, and surely there will be other tight ends.

Dallas Clark had a great career with Peyton Manning and the Colts. But Clark has his own health issues. And he dropped his share last season while catching half as many balls as Winslow. But Clark is all about the intangibles, and that could help Freeman, a lot.

This clearly is a Greg Schiano's Bucs kind of move. He doesn't see a future for Winslow in the offense, or in anything. I bet everyone nodded when Schiano ran it by them, if he ran it at all.

By the way, last week during voluntary practices, in one of his new roles, Dominik politely told media the proper pronunciation of Schiano's last name. It's Shee-Ann-O. We had been getting it wrong. It's hard on the 'A' — remember that.

You know, it says something about the new-look Bucs bunker that it took months, months, for the coach to care enough to have anyone tell anyone the right way to say his name. Or maybe he doesn't care. He's way busy.

I think every Buc is going to know how to say the name Schiano, and maybe even fear it.

There's a new king of the mountain — and it ain't K2.