Saints star defends Mike Evans after fan calls him overrated

It’s safe to say there’s no love lost between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New Orleans Saints.

The rivalry has always been heated, but it seemed to have intensified over the last few seasons. For most of the last decade, the Saints have been out of the Bucs league thanks to Drew Brees consistently making them competitive. Meanwhile the Bucs were going through one of the darkest and hopeless periods in franchise history, so it was a bit of a one-sided affair in terms of talent.

When the pendulum swung the other way, though, and Tom Brady came to town things changed. New Orleans still got the best of the Bucs in the regular season, but Tampa Bay snagged a trump card: retiring Brees at the Superdome, in the playoffs, on its way to winning a Super Bowl.

It’s not checkmate, but it goes to show that the Bucs-Saints rivalry is one of the more underrated in the league when it comes to intensity. Nothing personifies that more than the fact that Mike Evans and Marshon Lattimore are usually good for an ejection or two whenever the two teams meet.

The latest brawl happened last season when the teams met early in the year down in New Orleans. It wasn’t the first time Evans and Lattimore duked it out in the middle of a game and it’s probably not the last.

Despite this intensity, there does seem to be a level of respect, almost like a sibling rivalry. That was surprisingly on display this week when Mike Evans getting called out on Twitter resulted in a Saints player coming to his defense.

Saints star defends MIke Evans after fan calls him out

A Twitter engagement prompt has been going around lately asking fans to name a player who is overhyped, and therefor overrated. When a fans responded with Mike Evans, New Orleans Saints star Cam Jordan came to his defense.

Jordan called out not only that fan but anyone who has anything negative to say about Evans and the production he’s had over the course of his career.

It’s worth mentioning that Jordan wasn’t tagged in this Tweet, so it’s not like it forcibly came across his timeline. Even if it had, the fact that he leapt to Evans defense with a pretty honest and passionate response is objectively awesome.

This also feels like a ‘it’s okay for us to make fun of our family member but not you’ situation, which pretty much sums up the rivalry at its core.

While the Bucs-Saints rivalry is indeed an ugly one, it’s more of a sibling rivalry than a Yankees-Red Sox situation. It’s beyond clear that the two teams don’t get always get along, but this is proof that it doesn’t run as deep as it watching two players incite a brawl in the middle of a game might imply.

It also says a lot about the character of the players involved. We’ve seen players in rivalries use these prompts to further twist the knife and dunk on their opponent. Jordan could have done that, but instead used the opportunity to defend a player that he’s gone on record as disagreeing with in the past.

A Saints player defending a Bucs player, promoting civil discourse? World peace is truly possible.