Tom Brady and Mike Evans: Is there a fix for the Buccaneers?

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Tom Brady, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images) /

What can the Buccaneers do?

Tampa Bay is in a precarious spot of not having an answer for getting Evans more involved. The Buccaneers’ star receiver has played the majority of the reps in every game so far this season, and his best production actually came during his lowest usage against the Chargers with 71% of the offensive snaps.

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The Bucs don’t have any good answers from a playing-time perspective. If Evans is already playing so many snaps, overloading him could lead to an injury, which is already something that Evans deals with enough.

If snaps aren’t the issue, then the next logical place to look at is the routes and targets. This is the area where Evans sees the most significant drop-off. Mike has only received double-digit targets one time this season with ten, and four games have seen fewer than five total targets.

Putting this duo on the field together seems to be all the coaching staff can do for the time being. Evans is running his routes, and Brady is playing some of the most efficient football of his career, so everyone would expect this duo to catch fire sooner than later. Forcing targets to Evans wouldn’t work, considering the rate at which he is drawing double-teams, but there have to be more ways to get the ball to 13.

While the team and the offensive decisions aren’t the issues, the lack of chemistry is evident, and that fault could fall on Tom Brady. Brady’s accuracy has been above his career average for most of the season, but it seems like every misfire is on a Mike Evans route.

As the offensive captains on this team, this pair may have to spend much more time together outside of practice to build up their chemistry.

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