What to Do With Mike Evans

October 28, 2020

Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Mike Evans has been an enigma and considered a fantasy football bust in 2020. Justin Carter explains how to value him in redraft and dynasty leagues now that Antonio Brown is a Buc.

So, Mike Evans.

Perhaps the most frustrating wide receiver in fantasy football right now, Evans has scored six touchdowns this season. But in seven games, he's finished with two or fewer receptions four times and most notably has done a complete vanishing act in the games where he shared the field with Chris Godwin, averaging 1.5 catches for 12.75 yards in the four games he's played with Godwin. (Update: Chris Godwin will miss at least a week with a finger injury, which happened after I wrote most of this article. The Godwin injury is reflected in the fantasy advice section.)

And now, with the addition of Antonio Brown coming up, what are we supposed to do with Evans moving forward? Is he a situational play? Do we drop him??? Do we keep running him out there for the touchdown upside?

What's Wrong With Mike Evans

Maybe the first place to go here is to figure out why Evans has been so frustrating.

His 16-game pace for games where Godwin has played is 24 catches for 204 yards and 12 touchdowns. That's a weird stat line. Evans isn't even just missing a bunch of passes -- in three of these four games, he was targeted fewer than four times, including just four total targets in the past two weeks.

I try to resist making easy pronouncements, but when Evans three-game sample without Godwin would put him on a 101-catch, 1,424-yard pace, I think we have to accept the easy answer here: Evans is an afterthought when Godwin is on the field, but is back to being a No. 1 receiver when he's off of it.

For the purpose of this article, let's ignore the games where Godwin is out, like he will be in Week 8. Evans is fine in those games.

Using Add More Funds and their weekly data, let's look at some numbers during the weeks where both players have been available.

That first week, both players were on the field plenty, and it was Evans getting an end-zone look and a higher aDOT than Godwin. But another trend was already showing up that early on: that Godwin had become the primary receiver for Tom Brady already.

In Week 3, Godwin returned from a one-game absence. It was Scotty Miller who actually dominated the air yards, with 42.59 percent of them. Godwin didn't even have a great game, and Mike Evans caught two touchdowns. But he also just two receptions for two yards, so while the touchdowns were nice, his usage outside of that was decidedly not great. Miller being that deep guy didn't help.

Not sure if anyone else is starting to see what I am here: Godwin's not even the deep threat on this team. Evans is losing deep targets to Miller and Cyril Grayson. Godwin's just the main reliable guy for Brady, but his usage shouldn't really be cutting into Evans since they do different things. And yet, Evans is stinking it up during these games.

Yep. Evans had the higher aDOT, but also did next to nothing, again.

Here Comes Antonio Brown

I'm not going to get into the philosophical questions about whether or not Antonio Brown should be back in the NFL, or about how Brown being reinstated after domestic violence and sexual assault allegations while Josh Gordon still lingers in a reinstatement purgatory because of marijuana shows how the NFL's priorities aren't correctly calibrated, but I also couldn't write about Brown without acknowledging these issues.

The reality is that Brown is back, as he's signed a deal with the Buccaneers and is expected to be back on the field as soon as Week 9.

Assuming Brown is still at least a large fraction of what he was when he was last on a football field -- he led the NFL with 15 touchdown receptions in 2018 --  then he's going to have a key role on this team.

In his one 2019 game -- for the Patriots with quarterback Tom Brady -- Brown played 33.3 percent of the team's snaps, but was still targeted eight times, including twice on deep plays. He was in the slot of 47.6 percent of his snaps in that game, per PlayerProfiler.

Brown would most likely slide in as the primary slot guy, forcing Godwin outside a little more than he has been, as 58.6 percent of Godwin's snaps have come from the slot.

Moving Godwin outside doesn't seem like a good thing for Mike Evans. Brady is seventh in air yards per attempt, so it's not like having Brown in the slot is going to open up that many more chances for Brady to go deep, as he's already throwing down the field. If anything, a recalibration of this offense could see fewer air yards, with Brady spending more time looking for Brown in the shorter passing game. And Gronk is trending up when it comes to a big-bodied end zone threat for Tampa.

Godwin's also been used closer to the line of scrimmage than Evans so far. So, Godwin moving outside could theoretically just lead to even fewer air yards for Evans, and if Miller continues to play like he is, Evans could see his snap rate start to drop as well.

How To Handle Mike Evans In Fantasy

Short term? Start him as a WR1 this week with Godwin out and Brown not yet ready to go, because Evans stands a good chance of being his old productive self in this week's contest, even if the reason why is mainly necessity.

But once Godwin is back and Brown is suiting up, what do we do then?

I think the answer has to be this: hold onto him, but don't play him unless you have to.

Evans finds the end zone enough that he's better emergency play than other guys are, because he'll always bring that upside to the field. But I don't think you can trust Evans as a weekly starter at this point, especially with Brown in the fold. Evans won't magically start getting targets. Don't buy the idea that Brown will open up more chances for Evans by taking defensive pressure off of him, because that should be true enough with Godwin on the field, right? And are the Packers and Raiders really that good defensively? Shouldn't Evans have been fine against that pair of teams and not posted a combined three catches for 47 yards?

Maybe things will improve with Brown, but I see no reason to play Evans in the first game that the Bucs trio shares the field. Keep Evans on your bench. Starting Week 9, I might keep him on the bench even if Godwin is out if Brown is getting a full workload.

As for dynasty managers, this might be a good time to buy low on Evans. He's 27 and 6'5''. Brady won't be here forever. Maybe a quarterback who has an arm that works better for Evans' game will be here by 2022, or maybe Evans will be somewhere else. It'd be risky to acquire him, but if you can do it as a stark discount over what it would have taken a month ago, I like pulling the trigger on him, even if his outlook for the rest of 2020 is pretty meh.

Also, do that now, because a big game this week against the Giants can happen with Godwin out and that price tag will jump back up as managers start to think Evans is back.

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