Buccaneers: Officially time to panic about Justin Evans
By Cory Kinnan
After landing on the IR in week 11 last season, third year safety Justin Evans is still not ready to roll for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In the second round of the 2017 NFL Draft, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers took talented safety Justin Evans out of Texas A&M in hopes of adding a hard hitter to their secondary. Evans has been a day one starter since stepping foot into One Buc, but now entering his third season with the team, it is officially time to press the panic button on the young safety.
Evans is infamously known for popping his knee back into place on the field while in college with the Aggies, and since he has been a Buccaneer, he has seen his fair share of injuries in the pros as well. As a rookie, Evans missed two games due to injury, then found his season come to an end after landing on the injured reserve after just 10 games.
On the surface, missing eight games of a total 32 over the span of two years does not seem like a devastating start to a career, however this offseason leading up to the 2019 season has left plenty of cause for concern. The Buccaneers have already lost one player from the 2017 class to a career-ending injury in linebacker Kendell Beckwith, and it may be time to speculate about a second in Evans.
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Requiring surgery on the foot that landed him on the IR last season, Evans was in a walking boot early in the Spring, but did not return to practice until the last week of the summer. The third year safety did not participate in the fourth and final preseason game after stating he would like to play, and now he has not practiced at all this week leading up to the showdown with the San Francisco 49ers.
On the injury report this week, Evans is listed with an achilles injury, which is never a fun tendon to deal with. Reportedly he has just a sore achilles, but over the past few NBA seasons, superstars Demarcus Cousins and Kevin Durant have suffered devastating injuries after deciding to play through a bit of soreness.
The question now has to be asked: will Evans ever fully recover from the foot and ankle injury that ended his season ago? If the process and progress of this Spring and Summer are any indication of the current status of Evans and his foot, then the prognosis from afar is enough to set off the internal alarm bells.
In the Buccaneers’ first release of their depth chart after cutting down their roster to the final 53 players, Evans was listed as a backup behind Jordan Whitehead, who has been a man on a mission this summer. It appears that Evans unavailability has already caused him to fall out of the good graces of the new regime in Tampa after starting the previous two seasons.
It is not an understatement to say that Evans’ career began in promising fashion after he tallied three picks, six passes defended, 49 solo tackles, and two tackles for loss from the third level of the Buccaneers’ defense. Last year Evans took a bit of a step back, recording just one interception, two passes defended and one tackle for loss in the 10 games he appeared in.
What to expect from Buccaneers defense in week one. dark. Next
Maybe this negative response to Evans’ unavailability is an overreaction to the negative news surrounding Beckwith, and maybe Evans will be back and ready to go next week. However, the amount of time he has missed over the span of the offseason, and the fact that he is still nursing an injury as week one vastly approaches gives plenty of reason to be concerned about the long term health of the third year safety in Evans.