How Mike Evans Has Quickly Become One of the NFL’s Most Dominant Young WRs

Mike Evans is still a pup in his NFL career.

Yes, he’s among the tallest breeds and the Great Dane of his position. But as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver nears the end of his third season, he’s all of 23 years old.

Evans isn’t remotely close to entering his prime years let alone peaking. Those days are far on the horizon.

Which is why as he pairs with quarterback Jameis Winston to drag the Bucs offense out of a crater and Tampa Bay as a whole into playoff contention, it can be startling to remind yourself that Evans is going to keep growing as a receiver.

It’s a realization that could make even the most physical defensive backs stockpile frozen peas to soothe their Sunday wounds. He’s developed in 2016 by striking more fear in the minds and hearts of those assigned to contain the 6’5″, 231-pounder.

Evans has helped the Bucs to four straight wins by using more than his size, catch radius and red-zone steadiness, though he has plenty of all three. The main source of his rapid improvement isn’t a skill that’s resulted in a rising number. Instead, this particular digit has fallen as Evans floats to the top tiers of his position.

We know Evans is a massive bundle of leaping bulk, and blending that with his 4.53-second speed in the 40-yard dash makes him an athletic marvel. But the many preseason claims that Evans was a prime breakout candidate—you know, the ones written by everyone with access to a keyboard, including your pet duck—came with an important caveat.

He had to remove the butter from his hands.

Some of Evans’ drops can be tolerated as a consequence of his high-volume workload. But that tolerance reached its peak in 2015, when he was among the leaders in a receiving stat that shows you’re not, well, doing enough receiving.

Evans dropped 16.1 percent of the 87 catchable balls thrown at him in 2015, according to Pro Football Focus. That resulted in a mix of frustration and encouragement from those brimming with optimism.

It actually didn’t take much reaching to be in the latter group there—the one filled with positive vibes about a receiver who’s still maturing. Those rosy thoughts sprouted from how Evans’ sophomore season ended.

Even with those drops that at times made Tampa Bay fans invent new, colorful adult language, and even with the yards he left on the field, Evans was still only just shy of being a top-10 receiver, finishing 11th in the league with 1,206 receiving yards.

Evans’ games filled with drops would also be sprinkled with long receptions. The height of that phenomenon occurred against the New York Giants in Week 9, when Evans dropped five balls yet still finished with 150 receiving yards.

“They came in bunches, and they came from frustration,” Bucs offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach Todd Monken said. “He’s a prideful guy, and he wants to be a great player. That’s half the battle. You’ve got the God-given talent, and the guys before me have coached him well. So he has the really great skill set, but he allowed things to snowball.”

It was all a little maddening and showed just how sky-high Evans’ ceiling would be if he could make even a marginal pass-catching improvement.

Let’s check in on him through 12 games in 2016 and see where his drops fall on the manageable-or-maddening scale.

With four games remaining, Evans is already approaching his 2015 total for catchable targets. He also leads the league in targets with 133, which is well clear of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Antonio Brown (124).

Evans is averaging 11.1 targets per game, putting him on pace to have 177 balls thrown in his direction. That would shatter his previous single-season target high of 146 in 2015. Yet the significant increase in what the Bucs are asking for—and desperately need—from Evans hasn’t pulled his drops total up in equal measure.

In fact, the opposite has happened, with Evans’ drop rate down by more than half.

That far exceeds the preseason caveat for all Evans breakout predictions. A moderate improvement as a pure pass-catcher would have been sufficient because of Evans’ targets and the chunk yardage he’s able to collect even while dropping balls. But he’s gone way beyond …

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