Glazers Need To Do The Right Thing And Re-Sign Mike Evans

On Friday, the Bucs were given an ultimatum by Deryk Gilmore, Mike Evans’ agent, that he would break off contract extension talks by Sept. 9, the eve of Tampa Bay’s season opener at Minnesota.

But it wasn’t the ultimatum, issued via a press release, that caught my attention.

It was the fact that Gilmore praised the Bucs’ chief contract negotiators general manager Jason Licht and assistant general manager Mike Greenberg, who is the maestro of the team’s salary cap, and put the blame solely on Tampa Bay’s “ownership.”

Here’s the key excerpt from Gilmore.

Despite our efforts of the past two years, and the professionalism of Bucs General Manager, Jason Licht, and Assistant General Manager, Mike Greenberg, we have not received an offer to stay in Tampa. This is disappointing to Mike as he sees other teams step up to keep key pieces and players that are important to their organizations.
 
Many players with his status would have held out of camp to not risk injury, but Mike has continued practicing hard, as always because he puts the team first. When you have a player that will be a Hall of Fame and still has four to six more years to make an impact in the league, you move Heaven and Earth to keep him on your team, and we would hope ownership feels the same way.

The press release continues.

We have been working on extending Mike’s career with the Bucs for over a year, and we want the fans to know this is not a tactic and the ball is in the owner’s court.

That means the Glazers.

Uh oh.

Pewter People, this isn’t good.

Per Gilmore’s inference, this means it is out of the hands of Licht and Greenberg and solely a decision by the Glazers.

Licht drafted Evans with his first pick as general manager in 2014, and has seen him become the best offensive player in franchise history. With nine straight 1,000-yard seasons, Evans is indeed on a Hall of Fame trajectory, and would become the Bucs’ first-ever offensive player inducted into Canton.

Oftentimes it’s bad business to let feelings and emotions interfere in sticky things like contract negotiations. But Licht, a humble Midwesterner, has a sentimentality about him regarding Evans. I have to believe he would want Evans re-signed, even if it’s a lot of money – somewhere between the $20 million Chris Godwin makes and the $27 million per year that Cooper Kupp makes.

Greenberg has been with the Bucs longer than Licht and has seen many dark days in this franchise’s history. Sometimes the only bright lights on the field were Evans and fellow team icon Lavonte David. The guess here is that he would want Evans re-signed too.
This has to be a Glazers call.

And the hope is that between now and the start of free agency on March 11, 2024, the Glazers get a wake-up call and do the right thing by re-signing Mike Evans.

Several Theories As To Why The Glazers Might Be Opposed To Re-signing Mike Evans

So why aren’t the Glazers willing to once again open up the checkbook and re-sign of the team’s best players? I don’t know because no one has a direct line to the Glazers, who have made a practice over the last 28 years of operating in secret and speaking to the media just once per year at the NFL League Meeting in the spring.

But I have some theories.

The first of which is that the Glazers laid out a tremendous amount of cash – not salary money, actual cash in the form of signing bonuses and guaranteed salaries – to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars during the Bucs’ Super Bowl window from 2020-22 with Tom Brady.

Sensing that the party might be over and the team could be on a downturn as it transitions to a much younger team due to salary cap constraints, the Glazers may want to recoil spending and re-fill their bank account.

It’s their team, which is a business, and they are a for-profit business family. They are within their rights to make good investments when conditions are favorable (winning) and to hold back on investments when conditions aren’t or are unstable (non-winning).

Will this year’s Bucs team be 6-11 or 11-6? Probably somewhere in between, but more importantly, will Tampa Bay win in 2023 and continue with Todd Bowles steering the ship? Or will the Bucs lose and search for a new captain, which would usher in a new rebuilding project with a new head coach?

No one knows, including the Glazers. So perhaps they don’t want to saddle the organization with a huge, multi-year contract going forward right now.

Another possibility is that the Bucs have several young players coming up for contract extensions, including safety Antoine Winfield Jr. and left tackle Tristan Wirfs, although the two-time Pro Bowler could play on his fifth-year option in 2024.

Inside linebacker Devin White is playing on his fifth-year option now, and if quarterback Baker Mayfield has a career resurgence in Tampa Bay this year and leads the Bucs to the playoffs, all of a sudden the Glazer will have to shell out north of $20 million per year again for a starting quarterback.

Like Mayfield, strong safety Ryan Neal is also playing on a cheap one-year, prove-it deal, and could command more money in 2024.

Alongside this theory is the fact that two of the team’s recent, big, long-term investments in older players haven’t necessarily panned out due to injury.

Shaq Barrett, who turns 31 this fall, missed half of last year due to a torn Achilles tendon. Yet at age 30 and as one of the league’s highest-paid edge rushers, he only produced three sacks in the first eight games before going on injured reserve.

Ryan Jensen will miss his second straight season due to a freak knee injury on the second day of training camp in 2022. Jensen, who turns 33 next year, will likely be forced to retire, and certainly won’t be in Tampa Bay past this year.

Could these unfortunate deals be on the mind of the Glazers with Evans turning 30 in August? It’s hard to say, but they could be a factor in Bucs ownership being gun shy about giving Evans a huge pay raise – not to mention as much as $75 million in guaranteed money like Kupp’s deal has.

The last possibility that I see holding up the Glazers from wanting to shell out tens of millions of dollars to retain Mike Evans is what transpired with the Bucs in free agency over the past two seasons. Unable to reach an agreement with star cornerback Carlton Davis III, the Bucs let him test the market only to re-sign him for a below-market deal.

Davis didn’t fetch as much as he thought he would in free agency, and it meant salary cap savings for Licht and Greenberg, and actual cash savings for the Glazers. The Bucs did the same thing last year, letting cornerback Jamel Dean and iconic linebacker Lavonte David hit free agency – only for them to return for less than they expected in a softer-than-anticipated market.

Are the Glazers banking on the market being softer for Evans, who will turn 31 next August, than the receiver and his agent suspect? Perhaps.

Evans is one of the most underrated receivers in the league, and maybe Bucs ownership is willing to put that premise to the test.

It’s certainly a huge risk, and pissing off a team icon, who is beloved for his touchdowns on the field and his philanthropy off it, for a season and then hoping to make amends in the offseason in the early hours of free agency is a major gamble.

Time is still on the Bucs’ side as it pertains to Evans. The team has roughly two months between the end of the season in early or mid-January until early March to try to extend Evans before free agency if it wants to – or let Evans hit the market and see what happens.

Besides, what if Evans doesn’t hit 1,000 yards this season and underwhelms in Dave Canales’ new offense? What if Evans, who has four seasons of double-digit touchdowns, only scores six again, as he did last year? Maybe the Glazers want to see if the 30-year old Evans slows down a bit in his 10th NFL season, or if he’s still very much in his prime before making such a huge investment.

The Glazers Have Let Several Bucs Icons Go Before

One thing Bucs nation has to be prepared for is Mike Evans suiting up in a different uniform in 2024. That actually could happen. I didn’t think that was the case when I initially read Rick Stroud’s story in the Tampa Bay Times on Thursday night. I thought it might be posturing on Deryk Gilmore’s part.

But in doing some digging, I’ve come to realize that this is indeed not at agent tactic. There is a real chance the Glazers do not re-sign Evans, as crazy as that sounds.

They’ve actually done it before – it’s just been a while.

Newer Bucs fans may not remember, but the Glazers let two future Hall of Famers go. They decided not to re-sign iconic defensive tackle Warren Sapp in 2004 at the age of 31, and they released legendary safety John Lynch that same offseason at age 32.

Sapp went on to play four more seasons with the Raiders, and had a 10-sack year at age 34. Lynch, who was released due to a neck injury, played four more seasons with Denver – all of which were Pro Bowl seasons.

The Glazers even approved of Mark Dominik releasing Derrick Brooks, the greatest Buccaneer of all time, in 2009. Although, that was the right move, as Brooks was simply at the end of his career at age 35.

A month ago, the Glazers were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a Hall of Fame party in Ronde Barber’s honor. Barber, one of the most beloved Bucs ever, played all 16 of his NFL seasons in Tampa Bay. He’s one of just a few Bucs icons, including the likes of Lee Roy Selmon, Paul Gruber, Mike Alstott and Brooks, to achieve that feat.

With talks of a contract extension on the horizon, initially reported by Pewter Report back in May, it seemed like the Glazers would do the right thing and have Evans join that exclusive club.

Players like Evans don’t come along often. For the Bucs, whose offense has been more bad than good throughout the franchise’s existence, icons like Evans come around about once every 40 years.

Throw in the fact that he helped the Bucs win Super Bowl LV by scoring a team-record 13 touchdowns in 2020, the millions he’s donated to charities in Tampa and his hometown of Galveston, and the countless times he’s restructured his contract to help the team’s salary cap situation and it’s time for the Glazers to make an exception.

Why? Because Mike Evans is exceptional.

Glazers Need To Realize – And Reward – Mike Evans’ Impact

Unless Mike Evans suffers a major injury or his skills and production somehow suddenly decline in 2023, the Glazers need to do the right thing and make him a Buccaneer for life. And based on how Evans was tearing it up in training camp, I think he’s going to have one of his best seasons yet as he hits the decade mark in Tampa Bay.

The Glazers need to understand that not re-signing Evans will have consequences, as it will result in a backlash from the Bucs fan base. Evans is an enormously popular player, and if the team is heading for a downturn – even temporarily – in the post-Tom Brady era, there will be far more empty seats from angry Bucs fans not renewing their season tickets.

When Warren Sapp and John Lynch were let go after the 2004 season, the Bucs still had team icons like Mike Alstott and Derrick Brooks on the roster, as well as a popular, Super Bowl-winning head coach in Jon Gruden.

Tampa Bay actually won the NFC South division in 2005 by going 11-5, which helped act as a salve for the wound of Warren Sapp and John Lynch’s departure.

But that was then, and this is now.

The climate has changed in Tampa Bay. Life for the Bucs will not be nearly as easy without Mike Evans in Tampa Bay.

At 6-foot-5, 225 pounds, even if Evans slows down over the next two or three seasons, he can still be a productive possession receiver for years to come due to his size and ability to box out smaller defenders, and make contested catches. With his height, he’ll be capable of being a valuable red zone threat well into his mid-30s.

Waiting until the 2024 offseason might only drive Evans’ asking price up if he has a banner year. Or it might result in a softer market for Evans if his 2023 production more closely resembles last year’s numbers.

There’s still a chance the Glazers come to their senses in early 2024 and do the right thing by getting an extension with Evans done.

But there’s also a chance that they let another Bucs icon leave Tampa Bay.

The post Glazers Need To Do The Right Thing And Re-Sign Mike Evans appeared first on Pewter Report.