The Mike Evans record watch is on high alert.

Now in his 11th season, there are certain things that have become expected of Evans.

He is going to get 1,000 yards every season.

And he is a downfield ball winner.

That first certainty is still correct. Week 18 will continue his record-setting streak. But that second certainty may not be something that we can count on. But that doesn’t mean he is any less great.

As a matter of fact, it may be evidence he is better than season’s past. And he is developing into a new type of receiver. And that bodes well for him as he moves into a new era of his career.

Mike Evans Is Still An Elite Producer

Bucs OC Liam Coen and WR Mike Evans – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

As is the case at a certain point every year, early on in 2024 the cries started.

“Why isn’t offensive coordinator Liam Coen designing plays for Mike Evans?”

“Why don’t they throw the ball to Mike Evans more?”

Through the first six games of the season Evans had just 310 yards, averaging a pedestrian 51.7 yards per game. Those cries were less vocal than years past due to the success of the offense overall as well as the incredible play of Chris Godwin. And if you were just looking at box scores, one might not fault you for thinking at age 31, Evans was perhaps slowing down.

But since his return from injury after the bye week, Evans has been producing at one of the highest rates of his career. Let’s create a level of context because we are talking about someone who is a future Hall of Famer, and we should understand what his “normal” level of production is.

Adding in his playoff performances, Evans has caught 872 passes for 13,313 yards and 110 touchdowns over 176 games. Average that out over a now standard 17 game season and that turns into 84 receptions, 1,286 yards and 10.6 touchdowns.

Now let’s look at his post-injury production. In six games he has 39 receptions for 580 yards and five touchdowns. Let’s standardize that against his career. That averages out to 111 catches for 1,643 yards and 14 touchdowns.

Bucs WR Mike Evans – Photo by: USA Today

Did I mention he’s 31 years old? Oh, I did.

Did I mention he’s probably still feeling the hamstring strain that sidelined him for a month?

And he’s doing it while playing less.

His average number of routes per game over his career is 37. Over this most recent stretch he has run 17% less routes per game. Part of that is the Bucs boat-racing most of their opponents since the Week 11 bye. Part of it is the team trying to keep him fresh for the playoffs because of his age.

Did I mention he’s 31?

Part of it is the team trying to preserve that hamstring. Did I mention he’s still nursing a hamstring injury?

But here’s the most interesting piece of information I came across.

Over his entire career, this is the third-most efficient six-game run of production of his career. Evans is averaging 3.19 yards per route run. The only two stretches that beat his last six games are weeks 5-11 of 2015 when he averaged 3.31 and weeks 4-11 of 2014.

Just to recap, Evans’ three best six-game stretches of football came in his second season in Tampa Bay, his rookie season … and remarkably his 11th season.

Mike Evans Is Becoming A Different Receiver

Bucs WR Mike Evans – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

And this is a new version of Mike Evans. Only 15% of his targets are of 20+ air yards. That is the lowest rate of his career by almost 4%. And it’s not just that he is trading those targets for underneath opportunities. He is getting half of his targets between 11-20 yards, which is the third-highest rate of his career.

Evans is being moved around the field at a higher rate to find him more advantageous matchups and prevent the defense from simply being able to bracket him on one side of a 3×1 as in years past. From Week 12 to Week 16 Evans was in the slot 40.8% of the time. In only 10 other instances has he had a five-game run of higher slot usage.

“When you’ve got a guy that typically defenses want to cloud and you just stick him out there at No. 1 and say, ‘Mike, run vertical,’ the chances of him getting one-on-one are, at times, little,” Bucs offensive coordinator Liam Coen said. “You’ve got to pick and choose your spots where you can get him one-on-one at times, based on the feel of the game. If we just stuck him out there and [told him] to run vertical five or six times a game and you catch one of them, I don’t know if [those are] really great odds for us to get him to touch the ball as many times as we’d like him to.

“So, some of that stuff may be tweaked from what he may have been used to doing, but I think he’s doing a great job for us catching the ball over the middle and being that big target inside there. Obviously, if you do leave him one-on-one, [Baker Mayfield] is going to probably give him a chance. It’s kind of the best of both worlds, I hope. Hopefully we’ll be able to continue to do so.”

His route distribution is evolving as well. He is running go routes, curls, and seams 10% less than he did from 2020 to 2023. In place of those routes are slants, posts, drags and deep crosses. The Bucs are trying to get Evans over the middle of the field more.

All told his route distribution on in-breakers (slants, digs, deep crosses, posts and drags) is up to 6% this year from 33 to 39%. Those have taken the place of the traditional verticals like fly patterns, deep curls and seams. And you can see it in his average depth of target. Evans is on pace for a career-low 13.0 average depth of target. But his yards per catch isn’t suffering very much. At 14.1 yards per catch, it would tie the third-lowest output of his career but would mark the fifth of 11 seasons where he was between 14 and 15 yards per catch.

This coincides with an evolution of his quarterback. Baker Mayfield is throwing deep less often. He has targeted the deep portion of the field, 20+ air yards, on a career low 8.9% of his throws this year. It’s just good football to adjust the route distribution of your best receiver to match a change in the quarterback. Otherwise, that receiver becomes more decoy than anything else.

Bucs WR Mike Evans – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

And with these subtle changes there are marginal improvements in other areas that help make up for the lack of downfield explosive catches. Evans is on pace for a career-high 69.9% catch rate. That’s nearly 10% higher than his career rate.

This is a man who spent three years with Tom Brady throwing him the ball. His 27.3% target share is the highest since Next Gen Stats started tracking that metric in 2018. A total of 45% of Evans’ catches have gained 15 or more yards this season. That’s the fourth-highest rate of his career and second-highest since 2019.

All of this is to say that Evans still has “it” at age 31. But that “it” may be different than the “it” he had earlier in his career. He is more than just a downfield, sideline, contested catch ball-winner. Evans’ route running is more nuanced than most give him credit for. He creates easy separation in zone and man coverage. He can win over the middle of the field in traffic. He has caught seven of his eight contested catch opportunities of less than 10 air yards this season.

This all bodes well for Evans for the rest of this year, next year, and quite possibly beyond. He has adapted his game to a new offense, a new NFL and to his advancing age. Mike Evans is more productive than ever. And that’s a scary thought.