It was a mostly quiet game for Mike Evans in Week 10, which was a surprise considering the opposition. Washington entered Sunday’s game as the league’s last-ranked pass defense, but held Evans to two catches for 62 yards and a touchdown. 40 of Evans yards came on a touchdown pass from Tom Brady on the last meaningful play for the Bucs offense.

“He got single coverage,” head coach Bruce Arians said on Bucs Total Access this week.“3 times in the game he got singled, and we got him on that one. It’s just a matter of holding the ball. When he’s doubled and they’re rotating zones (at safety), it takes a little longer to get the ball down the field. We had him open a few times. We just got it out of our hand fast and took an underneath throw. I would have liked to see Mike get some more targets in that game.”

Some of Arians comments need clarification. Just because Evans was “singled” three times does not mean he was double-covered on all other plays. On the contrary, Evans was rarely double-teamed in this game. Washington didn’t play much man coverage at all, opting for deep zone variations to keep the ball in front of them. Because Evans runs so many vertical routes, the coverages matched up well with some of his patterns.

But anyway, back to Arians’ comments. On a recent episode of the Pewter Report Podcast, Paul Atwal and I went through every passing play in the Bucs 29-19 loss. I believe we successfully identified the “couple times” Evans was open, yet the ball went underneath. Check out the show for All-22 analysis!

Evans was also backside of the progression order several times. The Bucs expected him to get a ton of extra attention, so the decoy approach was prevalent in the first half. Yet Evans didn’t really receive a ton of extra coverage. Placing him on the frontside of the progression order would have helped generate more targets. In the second half the Bucs had just four drives, which limited his opportunities.

Overall, this isn’t a major concern for the Bucs offense. Evans should have been more involved, by coaches and quarterbacks on Sunday. But the large sample size shows he gets plenty of opportunities in the Bucs offense. Evans generates over seven targets per game this season. That puts him on pace for 125 targets on the year, which would be his most since 2018. In fact, he’s on pace to set more records this season.

You can listen to the spectacular entirety of Bucs Total Access with team reporter Casey Phillips right here.

The Bucs return to action on Monday Night Football against the Giants.