With the Tampa Bay Buccaneers celebrating their 50th anniversary this season, a lot of time has been spent looking back at the past. However, it feels like there hasn’t been a time in franchise history where what happens next has felt so exciting.
Mike Evans and his legacy could be a blending of those two sentiments, perhaps sooner than we all thought.
Baker Mayfield has transformed the Bucs into a contender and has masterfully ushered the team into the post-Tom Brady era. One piece of that connects it all is Evans, who will without a doubt go down as one of the greatest players in franchise history.
He won’t be in pewter forever, though, which is a reality we’re all grappling with more and more.
Evans almost left in free agency two years ago when he wasn’t given a contract before the 2023 season. That all ended up working out in the end, but it’s more than needing a new deal that could being his time in Tampa to an end.
Mike Evans is hinting at retirement again, but with a catch
Kay Adams stopped by Buccaneers training camp recently and sat down with Evans to get a feel for how things are going.
While Evans said that he was “focused on this season”, he didn’t shy away from addressing what the future beyond that might hold. He noted that all options are on the table, from retiring to re-signing for multiple more years in Tampa Bay.
“This is my last year of my deal. I’m obviously an older player, but I feel great,” Evans said. “Retirement at the end of the season is not off the table, and playing for, you know, two to five years is not off the table either. Well, five years, no. I’m not playing five more years.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard Evans bring up retirement, and it certainly won’t be the last. Just like when he went into the ‘23 season without a deal and it dominated the narrative, we’re living in a world where he has fewer years ahead of him than he does behind.
It doesn’t mean his retirement will come soon but it doesn’t sound like Evans has ruled it out.
We all know the end is near, but hearing that it could be at the conclusion of this upcoming season has Bucs fans everywhere turning into that one meme from The Punisher. It’s too soon, but to be fair Evans could play another decade and it would feel still too soon given how much he means to fans and the franchise.
The good news is, he still has a lot left to accomplish before he calls it a career. He’s entering a season where he can break Jerry Rice’s record for consecutive 1,000-yard seasons, and landing a second Super Bowl ring would do wonders to his already solid Hall of Fame case.
What the real takeaway is whenever these retirement conversations come up is that we simply cannot take Evans for granted. Bucs fans have been blessed with 11 seasons of being able to watch him and there hasn’t ever been a bad time to celebrate him.
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