At 4-6, there's no better time than the present for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to get back on the winning track, and a key weapon might be returning to join their effort.
Receiver Mike Evans (hamstring) is trending toward returning for Tampa Bay's Week 12 date with the New York Giants, head coach Todd Bowles told reporters on Wednesday.
The news would be a boon for quarterback Baker Mayfield, who has relied heavily on Evans as a trusted target since arriving in Tampa a year ago and has been forced to find new avenues since the losses of Evans and Chris Godwin in the Bucs' Week 7 loss to Baltimore. Tight end Cade Otton has benefitted from increased targets since that defeat, but the Buccaneers are at their best when Evans is on the field.
According to Mayfield, he's liking what he's seen from Evans recently.
"From what I can see, good. Just talking to him, he seems really positive about it," Mayfield said of Evans, who was a limited participant in practice on Wednesday. "You guys know: Mike's a pro. He's going to do everything he can to get back out there with us and fight for this team as we take it one game at a time."
Thanks to two straight losses by the Atlanta Falcons, the NFC South is still very much up for grabs. The Buccaneers currently trail the Falcons by two in the win column in the standings and can move within a game with a victory Sunday while Atlanta is on a bye.
Despite Bowles' reputation as a defensive coach, his Buccaneers have become an offensive team in 2024, and adding Evans back into the mix will only raise their ceiling. It's still not as good as getting both Evans and Godwin -- who is out for the rest of 2024 -- back, but it's the best the Bucs can do in this campaign.
Something else is also at stake: Evans' streak of 1,000-yard receiving seasons. He's hit the mark in each of his 10 previous NFL seasons, but still needs 665 yards over the Buccaneers' final seven games to surpass the mark in 2024.
Stats are nice, but the one that matters most resides in the win column. Ideally, the Buccaneers win with Evans posting big numbers, but that won't be a primary goal -- especially not for a team that needs to climb out of a 4-6 hole.
"The streak, yeah, it's important to us, but he cares about winning," Mayfield said of Evans. "He's a huge part of this offense when he's there, so I think that'll come naturally. But I've been in the situation where you're trying to force-feed the ball to a guy and that's not how this offense works especially. So, staying true to the reads, defense dictates where the ball needs to go, but when we have our 1-on-1 matchups with him, we need to take advantage of it, though."
The good news is that Tampa Bay's offense is vastly better with Evans in the equation. Mayfield has known Evans to be a weapon he can consistently target even when all else fails, and usually, Evans delivers.
We'll see if his return alone is enough to propel the Bucs toward a late-season playoff push.