For over a decade now, Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Mike Evans has been as solid as it gets in fantasy football. But he’s getting older, and the end is coming soon. Is this the year Evans finally declines, or should fantasy managers scoop up one of the most consistent players in fantasy at a value in 2025 drafts?
Should You Draft Mike Evans in Fantasy?
There’s an argument to be made that Evans is the most reliable WR in fantasy football history. He was never the best or even truly elite, with his best season of 18.8 fantasy points per game. But for 11 consecutive years, Evans has finished from a mid-WR2 to a high-WR1 10 times.
The worst season of Evans’ career came in 2017 when he averaged a still-useful 13.4 PPG. Since 2018, he’s averaged between 15.0 and 18.1 PPG every year. As a reminder, 16.0 PPG is roughly the threshold for WR1 production. He is a machine.
Throughout his career, Evans has largely been an iron man. He’s missed a total of 14 games in 11 years. However, Evans hasn’t always been in the pinnacle of health. He’s spent considerable time on the injury report. He’s just been able to play through nagging injuries and has always been a quick healer.
Our highest Average Separation Scores on slants in 2024:
1. Brian Thomas Jr. – .500
2. Dontayvion Wicks – .450
3. Mike Evans – .395
4. Romeo Doubs – .360
5. A.J. Brown – .316In fact, here’s how they stack up across their entire route trees: https://t.co/bOywp1Rt8O pic.twitter.com/fHKsGv26hG
— Fantasy Points Data (@FantasyPtsData) March 19, 2025
Another all-time great wideout, Julio Jones, had a similar pattern. Eventually, his body was no longer able to recover. For Jones, that occurred at 31. We saw glimpses of this last season when Evans missed three games with a hamstring strain. It’s the soft tissue injuries that usually get them.
Now 32, fantasy managers must grapple with the possibility that Evans’ 2025 season could resemble Julio’s 2021 campaign when he was limited to 10 games and averaged a paltry 8.0 PPG.
At first, your reaction may be shock and disbelief. How could Evans, who is coming off a season in which he showed no signs of decline and averaged 17.2 PPG, suddenly be that bad? I’m not saying it’s likely. But in 2020, Julio averaged 16.2 PPG. The very next year, it was over.
Evans has already fended off Father Time quite well. Wide receivers with his sort of skill set tend not to age all that gracefully.
The Bucs are already preparing for life after Evans. Jalen McMillan posted WR1 numbers over the final five weeks of the 2024 season. Yet, the team drafted Emeka Egbuka in the first round anyway. There are some teams that don’t even have two quality starting receivers. You can argue the Bucs have four.
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That said, fantasy managers are baking this risk into Evans’ price. His ADP sits at WR21, a number he has finished above every year of his career except 2015. And, again, while decline is certainly possible, we haven’t seen any signs.
Taking on older wide receivers is definitely risky. But if you think about every wide receiver in the past 25 years or so who has excelled into his mid-30s, all of them are all-time greats (Marvin Harrison, Terrell Owens, Larry Fitzgerald, to name a few). Evans is an all-time great.
Last year, Evans averaged 2.44 yards per route run, 13th in the league. He was targeted on 26.8% of his routes run, good for 18th in the league. This is still a true WR1.
Baker Mayfield is playing like the guy the Browns thought they were getting when they selected him No. 1 overall in 2018. The Bucs also project to have a bad defense. They play in a division with multiple teams in domes and have a lot of potential shootouts on their schedule.
Evans may only have a year or two left as an impactful fantasy asset. With that said, I inclined to take younger receivers whose best season is undoubtedly in front of them over Evans. I have the Bucs veteran as my WR21, which is slightly behind his WR18 ADP. Regrettably, I don’t anticipate drafting much Evans this season.
Dan Fornek’s Mike Evans Fantasy Projection
Mike Evans’s 2024 season is a tale of two halves. Evans functioned as a boom-or-bust WR2 for the first seven weeks while taking a backseat to Chris Godwin. Evans caught 26 of 45 targets for 335 yards and six touchdowns, finishing as the WR21 in PPR points per game (13.6). He had three weeks with 23.0+ fantasy points and four weeks below 10.0.
Evans missed the first three weeks of Godwin’s injury with an injury of his own, but returned as the focal point of Tampa Bay’s passing attack. From Weeks 12 to 18, Evans was targeted 65 times, catching 48 passes for 669 yards and five touchdowns. His strong finish continued his streak of 1,000-yard receiving seasons and pushed him to the WR11 in PPR scoring for the season (17.2). The veteran receiver has scored at least 16.0 fantasy points in six of the last nine seasons.
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Evans will be the focal point of Tampa Bay’s passing attack again in 2025, with Godwin working to return from his ankle injury. However, 2025 first-round pick Emeka Egbuka will factor heavily into the passing attack, which once again limits his upside. The one thing we can rely on is that the Buccaneers’ offense will stop at nothing to get Evans to 1,000 receiving yards if he is on the field.
The volume in Tampa Bay is starting to go to other receivers, so Evans’s days as a high-end WR1 are likely outside of spike weeks. However, if he gets the targets he needs for the 1,000-yard record (and red-zone targets), he will continue to be a rock-solid WR2 in fantasy.
