Mike Evans Injury: WR ‘feels good’, still game-time call

By Kevin Parvizi | Sep 13, 2015

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will get to face a Tennessee Titans secondary that will miss top cornerback Jason McCourty, and the Titans have also listed veteran offseason signing Perrish Cox as questionable with a hamstring injury he suffered this week. However, the Buccaneers could be without an even higher-caliber player in last year’s seventh overall pick Mike Evans, who has been battling a nagging hamstring injury for quite some time now.

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Evans’s status looked squarely in doubt until he was able to get a practice in on Friday, and Buccaneers head coach Lovie Smith said some positive things about how his star receiver looked out there.

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According to the NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, Evans still “feels good”, and, more importantly, is “optimistic” that he will be able to suit up today against the Titans for the 4:25 p.m. ET kick-off.

Rapoport reports that the Bucs will make their decision on whether or not Evans suits up after they see him go through pre-game workouts, and while that tones down Evans’s optimism, they will play him if he looks as good as he feels.

Of course, since Evans is a 22-year-old building block for this team and is already a sure-fire, top-20 wide receiver with top-ten upside, the Buccaneers could just play it safe with him. There’s a chance that even if he does play past the questionable listing, the Bucs could limit him to key situations in today’s game.

Hamstring injuries early on in the season are no joke, because there’s always the risk of aggravation down the road. The Buccaneers will want to make a statement today against the Titans and No. 2 overall pick Marcus Mariota by giving Jameis Winston every chance possible to shred the Titans banged-up secondary, but the Bucs could be fine with Doug Martin, Austin Seferian-Jenkins, Louis Murphy, and V-Jax playing.

Murphy suddenly becomes an interesting flier in very deep leagues and certain DFS leagues if Mike Evans doesn’t play, but V-Jax stands to gain the most from the No. 1 receiver’s absence.

At this point in time, I tentatively expect Evans to play, but this is a call that could go either way. The likely scenario has Evans playing but in a limited capacity, but, again, this is a toss-up of a game-time decision, mostly because we need to be cautious when possible aggravations are a possibility.

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