Reel Talk: Mike Evans
It’s easy to be mad at Mike Evans. He led the league in drops with 11, which is over 7% of the passes thrown his way, scored only three times and his catch percentage (50%) ranks 125th out of the 127 NFL players who saw 50 or more targets. Somewhat inexplicably, his fantasy numbers aren’t as bad as those figures would make y’all think.
When comparing this season to last, we see Evans finished with fewer single digit scoring days (four vs six), has topped 20 points the same number of times (four) and scored around one less point per game. Basically, aside from the touchdown differential, he had nearly the exact same season statistically.
While it may be comforting to see there hasn’t been a complete statistical falloff, the similarity in Evan’s two NFL seasons gives me a bit of an uneasy feeling. You’d really like to see players we expect to be elite actually progress from year to year. With the 22 year old, that hasn’t been the case, at least not on paper.
Here at Reel Talk, we don’t rely purely on stats and metrics and all that highfalutin fancy book learnin’ math wizardry stuff. Instead, we roll up our sleeves, gird our loins, and do what real football guys do, watch TV.
As with the first edition of this occasional series where we talked about Jeremy Hill, film guru, Nick Whalen broke down Evans’ tape, passing his notes on to me. Then I did the same, except I was eating caramel corn. Here is what we found.
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Oh My Heavens, Evans
Let’s start with the most obvious issue with Evans’ game this season: I’ve seen fewer drops at a Grateful Dead concert. (I bet that is the first acid reference in DLF history.)
Even when he catches the ball, Evans uses inconsistent technique, often allowing the oblong leather orb to hit the numbers on his chest. As much of a specimen as Evans is, his chest doesn’t have hands.
This screenshot was taken at the exact point of the catch. You can see rather obviously that Evans is using his tummy as a third hand. Aside from it probably hurting a bit to catch a Jameis Winston zinger in the gut, it’s very poor technique and has continued to be responsible for several of his nine drops.
I can recall two instances in the handful of games I watched where Evans allowed the ball to get into his body on a quick slant. The one above ended up as a catch, but the other, which occurred in overtime of Tampa’s week eight game against Atlanta, did not.
Nick’s comment on the drop I just mentioned is rather succinct, “Drop! If he uses his hands instead of his body, it’s a catch.”
Our next set of pictures show another common type of drop for Evans.
In this play, he ran a quick five yard hitch route straight upfield towards the defender before quickly stopping to face Winston, who had released the ball before Evans presented himself as a target. The pass was a bit wide, which is why in the first screenshot we see Evans taking a single step towards the sideline. Unlike the first play, we see good technique, as Evans has his hands up and away from his body. The problems start in screen number two, with our subject turning his head and making a cut back inside before securing the ball. Predictably, this results in a drop on a play where he had a legitimate chance of losing the defensive back (DB) and putting himself in a one-on-one situation in the open field with the single high safety.
With the issue established, the big question is whether Evans can overcome the problem. Mr. Whalen addressed just that topic, “Long arms make reaction time more important for a player like Evans at the catch point. When the football is delivered near his body, he struggles. My hope is the more he gets comfortable in the NFL, the quicker his reaction time will be in tracking the football out of his breaks. He has the physical gifts of huge hands and long arms to snatch the football easily. I believe he will get more consistent with his technique and thrive, just like he became more comfortable at Texas A&M his third season.”
Drops aren’t the only thing plaguing the sophomore receiver. As with his inconsistent technique at the point of the catch, we saw a lot of inconsistency in route running. When Evans is fully mentally engaged, he is incredibly difficult to cover. Unfortunately, there are myriad examples where he neglects to do small things, allowing DBs to break early or stay in his hip pocket.
In this play, Evans is running a drag route out of the slot on first and ten. Here is how it looked pre-snap.
Evans’ goal here is to freeze the safety as he transitions from running upfield to across it. Right before he crossed the hash on the 28 yard line, Evans turns his head upfield and took what I would describe as a halfhearted half-step in that direction.
You can see his eyes looking up field, but he never commits strongly enough to have any impact on the positioning of the defender.
This is the exact moment where the safety puts his foot in the ground and starts to close the gap. When you look at where Evans is on the field here versus where he is in the second picture, you can see that within one step of his disinterested fake at the top of the route, the safety started his pursuit.
Nick sums the entire play up well, “The safety drives immediately on the drag route and tackles Evans short of the first down marker. With a better route and stem on top of his route, he may have frozen the defender for a longer period of time.”
While we have Nick summing things up, here’s what he had to say about Evans’ route technique as a whole, “Route running was the number one concern I had in watching Evans’ film. Several times corners pushed him nearly to the sideline on a go route, which makes the quarterback’s job almost impossible, as they have to drop the football into a bucket. Instead, Evans needed to lean into the CB throughout the route to give the QB several yards over his outside shoulder to allow for a high probability of a completion. Many defensive backs drove on the route or completely gambled on what his route would be. This tells me Evans is tipping off his routes, which makes him predictable. Poor routes significantly outweighed good routes, and it shows. Evans is only getting by on natural gifts at this point, which is still a mid WR2 type in his NFL career. Even with slight improvements, his fantasy stats would go up significantly. The good news is he’s still only in his second year and route running develops over time.”
Don’t Take a Hike or go on Strike, We Still Like Mike
As often as we see Evans not fully commit to proper route running technique, there are flashes of brilliance. Of all the film we went through, this is my favorite play, even if it resulted in an incompletion. First, the setup.
According to Nick, “The key to a release is making the CB think it’s a two way go. I used the word “think” here because even if the CB doesn’t step in any direction, it makes them less aggressive and it creates a win for the receiver.”
In this play, Evans illustrates that exact point, as he makes great use of a double move. The first, which happens on the release, puts the defender, Will Blackmon, slightly off balance as he tries to get his hips swung around. It isn’t much, but when watching the play on film, you can see the moment of doubt that slows Blackmon just enough for Evans to gain an advantage.
This quick outside stutter allows Evans, who cuts back towards the inside, to quickly close the gap to Blackmon, instantly putting him in catchup mode. The difference between the screenshot above and the next one is barely even a single step from Evans.
You can see Blackmon has adjusted nicely to Evans’ initial move, but his having to make that adjustment leaves him in poor position to handle what happens next.
This is the very beginning of the second move. With Blackmon pursuing Evans to the inside, the receiver makes another fake to the outside, throwing the corner off balance for a second time. (Seeing the play at speed shows how good Evans feet are, especially for being such a massive receiver.)
Concerning the second of the moves, Nick said, “Just like at the release, the purpose of stemming the CB is to make them think the WR can go in any direction. This fake to the outside opens the door to many possibilities and creates another win for Evans.”
Here you can see Blackmon trying to adjust back to the outside just as Evans plants his left foot to once again make way back inside. All this trickeration results in Blackmon grabbing Evans’ arm and jersey in an effort to keep him from separating. It doesn’t work.
In the NFL, this big of a gap to a defender with all the room Evans had to the outside, which is where he is now headed (go back to the diagram in first screenshot of this play and you can see he curves back out), is death to a defense. If Winston makes the throw, this is a huge gainer. Or, as Nick puts it, “Evans has now successfully stacked the CB, which is the ideal position for a WR during a route.”
This sort of play isn’t a white buffalo for Evans. There are mounds of examples of fantastic route running. The issue isn’t whether or not he can do it, it is whether or not he can do it consistently from play-to-play.
Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Even though I am of the mind we need to change our expectations slightly based on a second season of evidence that closely replicates the first, I am holding. Because I’ve consistently been a titch lower on Evans than most, perhaps you would expect me to drop him precipitously in my ranks, but as usual, I have defied expectations, keeping him in that low-end WR1 territory as my 11th ranked pass catcher.
As Winston improves and Evans matures as a player (he is still only 22), hopefully we will see him become more consistent with his hands and routes. Nothing I saw led me to believe Evans has reached his peak, but as I alluded to in the first sentence of the last paragraph, I do wonder if his shortcomings will prevent Evans from being the top-three or four wide receiver many thought he’d be.
I’ve said plenty, so let’s get Nick’s take to close things out:
“I was a fan of Evans out of college, and haven’t lost hope because of some struggles. If anything, this allows him to be a buy-low target. Despite some early successes, all WRs take time to develop. Think of Nuk Hopkins in his second season versus his third. Evans is only a second year player, and has some very correctable flaws to his game. But the amount of 6’5″ players with his athleticism in the NFL starts and ends with him.”
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