{"id":452632,"date":"2026-03-01T22:07:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T22:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/452632\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T22:07:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T22:07:14","slug":"buccaneers-might-already-have-ideal-mike-evans-replacement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/452632\/","title":{"rendered":"Buccaneers might already have ideal Mike Evans replacement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Evans&#8217; future with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/uk\/nfl\/tampa-bay-buccaneers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tampa Bay Buccaneers<\/a> is anything but clear, with the star receiver set to explore his options in free agency.<\/p>\n<p>With Evans not knowing if he&#8217;ll return or not, the Buccaneers will be eagerly awaiting his decision. And if it happens to be that Mike doesn&#8217;t return, well, it might not be all bad for Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, losing a player of Evans&#8217; caliber isn&#8217;t ideal, but one position the Bucs are deep in is receiver.<\/p>\n<p>And one who could benefit from a potential Evans departure is Jalen McMillan.<\/p>\n<p>Head coach Todd Bowles is bullish on what Jalen could do in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He is a very talented guy and he is a very passionate guy,&#8221; Bowles said via the\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.buccaneers.com\/news\/great-football-ahead-jalen-mcmillan-2026\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">team website<\/a>. &#8220;I think he fits in great with the receiver room and he is a workhorse. He comes out to work everyday and I think he has some great football ahead of him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>More:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/uk\/nfl\/buffalo-bills\/news\/bills-set-perfect-move-keon-coleman\/4250fa0195800a4065e648be\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Bills set to make perfect move for Keon Coleman<\/a><\/p>\n<p>McMillan the heir to Evans?<\/p>\n<p>While it isn&#8217;t an exact swap, but with Chris Godwin, Emeka Egbuka, and Tez Johnson as the other weapons, McMillan could be the downfield threat for Baker Mayfield.<\/p>\n<p>With the physicality and speed to be a key option for Mayfield, McMillan could be the beneficiary of increased snaps if Evans doesn&#8217;t return.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, in an ideal world, Evans would have one more go around with Tampa Bay, but if he doesn&#8217;t, it might not be the season-sinking move some think.<\/p>\n<p>Is McMillan the heir to the Evans throne? It might be too early to tell, but he could get first crack at it.<\/p>\n<p>More NFL news:<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike Evans&#8217; future with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is anything but clear, with the star receiver set to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-452632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}