Tampa Bay Buccaneers QB Mayfield says Mike Evans' legendary career isn't over, seeing untapped potential and a competitive fire that demands a different, stronger conclusion.
Nobody knows what Tampa Bay Buccaneers legend Mike Evans will do.
Maybe he’ll return to the Bucs, the only NFL franchise he’s known in his 12-year-career.
Maybe he’ll play for another team, which would be his prerogative as a free agent.
Retirement is also an option, since Evans is going to be 33 in August and is already older than Barry Sanders, Jim Brown, and Calvin Johnson were when they retired. We don’t know what’s going to happen with Evans, and since free agency doesn’t open until March 11, we might not know for a while. But one person who knows Evans better than most doesn’t think he’s played his last game.
The first part of that plan didn’t come into fruition.
Evans suffered multiple injuries, which cost him nine games and a chance to break the NFL record for consecutive 1,000-yard seasons, which he now shares with Hall-of-Fame receiver Jerry Rice, with 11.
This might have been tolerable for Evans had the Bucs been a winning team, but that didn’t end up happening, either. The Bucs started 6-2, but lost seven of their last nine games to finish with a losing record and, for the first time since 2019, without an NFC South title.
Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield doesn’t know what Evans is going to do, and doesn’t want to influence his teammate one way or the other.
But Mayfield told Bucs great Rondé Barber on "The Rondé Barber Show" on Wednesday that he can’t see Evans going out this way.
“Understanding who Mike is, this is my guess, that he didn’t want it to end this way,” Mayfield said. “He knows the potential if we’re able to stay a little bit more healthy."
Mayfield said he expects new offensive coordinator Zac Robinson to provide a big boost for the offense, and that Evans has “more in the tank.”
“You could tell with the energy, the fire he had at the end of the year,” Mayfield said.
To Mayfield’s point, Evans showed late in the season that he can still play at a high level.
In Tampa’s Thursday Night loss to the Atlanta Falcons at home on Dec. 11, Evans caught six passes for 132 yards.
Evans also isn’t far removed from posting WR1 production, having eclipsed 1,000 yards in 2024.
The thought of Evans ending his career in a place other than Tampa is hard to imagine, and getting him back would be a big boost to a franchise still recovering from the 2025 collapse.
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