Mike Evans is coming off the standard Mike Evans season, which means he was excellent in 2023.
In fact, Evans was better in his first year with Baker Mayfield than he was in his last year with Tom Brady. He caught 79 passes last season for 1,255 yards on 136 targets while producing a league-high 13 touchdowns.
Evans has played a full decade in the NFL and caught at least 70 passes in eight different years, while also scoring a dozen or more touchdowns five times. Famously, he never finished a season with fewer than 1,000 receiving yards.
If you’re looking for any sign of decline in Evans’ performance heading into his age-30 season… well, good luck. There are no such indicators and all the underlying advanced numbers look excellent. Last year, he once again finished among the leaders in contested receptions (16-of-30) and average depth of target (15.0), while setting career highs in yards after catch (333) and YAC per reception ( 4.2). Evans has also played in all 17 games in 2023, so there are no health concerns here.
If we just gave you Evans’ raw numbers without a name attached, you’d probably assume he was a lock-down WR1 in fantasy, a consensus second-round pick in almost every format. His season average for 17 years over his career looks like this: 84 receptions, 1,289 yards, 10 TDs. Evans nailed those stats last year — five fewer receptions, three more touchdowns — while finishing as the overall WR4. In six of the last eight seasons he has finished in the top 8.
Basically, man never gives us a failure. Evans has yet to rank outside the top 30 at his fantasy position at the end of any season and has seven top-10 finishes. He is as profitable as possible among great players.
However, the fantasy community has clearly become bored with all those 1,200-12 seasons of Evans because his average starting draft position has almost no relationship to his actual history. He is currently the WR19 in terms of ADPdespite not finishing this low in any season since 2017. Evans is going after several younger, busier receivers who have never produced at the level he consistently achieves.
Of course, this is a recurring phenomenon in fantasy across all sports. Many of us are so focused on coming up with the next big project that we neglect the current Big Deal. People are in for a very difficult victory lap if we get an 80-1,150-8 season from Drake London at WR12, even if Evans gives us his usual 80-1,200-10 at a friendlier cost.
It’s likely that some of you are dismissing Evans due to his age — he turns 31 in August — but then again, he hasn’t shown any signs of decline over the past year. Absolutely nothing. It’s also not like his best years were a pure product of a Tom Brady offense. This man has caught two-thirds of his career touchdown passes from a rogue gallery of QBs that includes Jameis Winston, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Josh McCown and Mike Glennon.
When we last saw Evans in action just four months ago, he was absolutely cooking the Lions in the postseason (8-147-1).
Evans has been winning with size, strength, length and separation ability for the past 10 years, and there’s no reason to think 2024 will be substantially different than any other season of his career.
Fade this fantasy legend at your own risk.
