Wide receiver Mike Evans is back on the practice field and moving closer to returning to the Buccaneers lineup after missing three games and most of a fourth with a hamstring injury.
Evans is returning to a team that has lost all four of those games to move from 4-2 to 4-6 as they head into Sunday’s game against the Giants. Quarterback Baker Mayfield called it “huge” for the team to get Evans back because of how his presence changes the way defenses play them on a weekly basis.
It also opens up the door for Evans to make a run at his 11th straight season with 1,000 receiving yards. Evans has 335 yards, so he’d need to average 95 yards per game to reach the milestone and Mayfield said that it will be on everyone’s mind without being their main focal point.
“You guys have been around Mike for long enough now,” Mayfield said, via the team’s website. “The streak, yeah, it’s important to us, but he cares about winning. He’s a huge part of this offense when he’s in there, so I think that will come naturally. But I’ve been in a situation where you kind of force-feed the ball to a guy, and that’s not how this offense works, especially. Staying true to reads. The defense dictates where the ball needs to go; when we have our one-on-one matchups with him we need to take advantage of it.”
The odds for both the Evans streak and a playoff bid may be long shots right now, but good numbers for Evans will likely help the team’s bid to make it back to the postseason so it could still wind up as a win-win in Tampa.
