Football players who draw no attention to themselves rarely get the attention they deserve. That has been the case for Buccaneers receiver Mike Evans, who continues to quietly put together a Hall of Fame resume.
Quiet is the key word. Evans has always been one to say less. He has been a bit more talkative in recent years, but he still prefers to do most of his talking through his actions on the football field.
With the Buccaneers in transition, sort of, questions have emerged about Evans’s future. After nine seasons — each of which resulted in more than 1,000 receiving yards, an NFL record — the 2014 first-round pick is entering the final year of his contract. The man who drafted Evans wants him to stick around longer.
“I can’t see Mike playing anywhere else,” G.M. Jason Licht told Dan Pompei of TheAthletic.com. “I hope and think we can figure something out so he can retire a Buc. We want Mike to be here long term.”
Evans is due to make $13 million in 2023. That’s well below the top of the market. The question becomes whether someone else will make a sizable offer to Evans, after 10 NFL seasons.
For now, he’s a Buc. He turns 30 in three days. And he could have a big year, post-Tommy.
“I expect him to get a lot of targets,” Licht told Pompei. “His production could go up in terms of volume. I can tell these quarterbacks both really like Mike a lot.”
For his part, Evans remains motivated.
“Twenty, 30 years from now, I want people to look back and say, ‘He was a bad mother,’” Evans said.
It can be said currently. The real question is whether his career will echo into future decades. Plenty of players who have great careers become forgotten, out of sight and out of mind as the game rolls on with new great players doing new great things.
One player who won’t be forgotten, but not because of great NFL play, is quarterback Johnny Manziel. A recent documentary created the impression that, while at Texas A&M, Manziel was the straw that stirred the drink. Licht concluded otherwise.
“I remember watching Johnny Football thinking, is it Johnny or is it Mike Evans?” Licht told Pompei. “Who made who? And the more I watched, I knew it was Mike.”
If their respective NFL careers have any relevance, it’s not even close. Manziel had two lackluster seasons. Evans has stacked nine great ones together, and a Super Bowl win.
And he shows no signs of slowing down.
