Quick Slant: SNF - There Are Worse Things Than Being Left for Dead
Buccaneers @ Cowboys, Sunday @ 8:20 PM
In the summer of 1993, Galveston hung in limbo—metastable, uncertain, and unbearably hot. The oppressive heat and humidity clung to everything, and breathing air felt like climbing a mountain. The city, once vibrant, had been battered by oil spills in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The tar balls washed ashore, and the hotels emptied. Factories closed and bills piled up; people spent their days waiting for a break from its cruel dictators—from recession, from war, and this overbearing humidity. Yet, beneath the surface, there was a stubborn defiance. The kids on the beach didn’t know the weight of the city’s struggles; they pretended to be Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, and Troy Aikman. The men at the barbershop held their shoulders back and heads high; smiles came naturally among strangers at the grocery store. The Dallas Cowboys were World Champs. Even as Dallas felt a lifetime away from this languid beach town draped in unmanaged rust and saltwater corrosion, the silver and blue star dared the denizens of towns like Galveston, spread throughout Texas, to be proud. Unto this, Mike Evans came into the world a Cowboys fan.
Evans is a Texas guy; he went to Texas A&M. On the sun-drenched expanse of supple Tifway 419 Bermuda grass inside the maroon cauldron of Kyle Field, where the top rafters pierce the sky and the bleachers move like a living, singing organism for four rampant hours every Saturday in the fall, Evans kept the Manziel machine humming amid one of the Aggies’ most successful modern seasons. Sternly and silently, he moved in the quiet beneath the madness of a sensation; in the end, he was drafted 15 picks earlier than Johnny Manziel himself—before Odell Beckham, Aaron Donald, and Zack Martin.
Evans returns to Texas this Sunday as a legend in his own right. He is about 2,000 yards away from the all-time top-10 in receiving yardage. He is already ninth in receiving touchdowns. He has a Super Bowl ring. He has been named five times as a Pro Bowler and twice as an All-Pro. And next on his list of accomplishments—Evans is just 251 yards away from becoming the first player in NFL history to secure 11 straight 1,000-yard seasons. Evans returns to Texas this Sunday, and the kids in the yard pretend to be him. Interrupted from their set-up high-points and meticulously practiced toe-taps, they look up to lay eyes upon a legend—a future Hall of Famer—one we’ve only now begun to recognize as one of the all-time greats.
Evans won’t likely break the record this Sunday night, but he will before season’s end. The pass will come from Baker Mayfield, a fellow Texan—a parallel traveler from the realm of the underestimated to the kingdom of the beloved. The Bucs will continue their transference from a team that, upon the departure of Tom Brady, skeptics said should disband, into a season inevitably rising each year to claim the NFC South.
The Cowboys must become an involuntary disruptor; it is only fair to the game that they try to make the playoffs until they are eliminated from contention, but their elimination is as inevitable as Evans’s progress. In reality, their season has long concluded, and the dusk of their championship window appears to be as final as the post-Brady Bucs’ window once seemed. So, as Evans looked to the Cowboys for answers and inspiration in his youth, the Cowboys today look to Evans for theirs.
Buccaneers’ Implied Team Total: 26
The Buccaneers are tied for 15th in neutral run rate and are among the slowest teams at the line from a neutral script. Agnostic of game script, these tendencies generally hold; Tampa Bay has averaged 64 snaps per 60 minutes, which is around average.
They rank fifth in EPA per play and offensive success rate.
The Bucs are seventh in EPA per dropback and fourth in offensive success rate on dropbacks. Led by Mayfield, the Bucs are tied for third in first downs, tied for third in passing TDs, fourth in points per game, and fifth in points per drive.
Mayfield ranks eighth in dropbacks, leading to the fourth-most passing yards and third-most passing TDs. He ranks sixth in QB Rating, ninth in EP/G, and third in FPOE/G, adding up to fifth in PPR.
The perception of Mayfield fluctuates like stocks. By the time he replaced Tyrod Taylor and beat the Jets on Thursday Night football after being taken first in the NFL draft, this former college walk-on—this 6’1” underdog—was considered legitimate. That year with Cleveland, he broke the rookie TD record and was a known success; some four years later, he was thought of as a likely bust, guiding the hapless Panthers before sinking even lower to become a backup in Los Angeles. When he took the reins after Brady left Tampa in 2023, no one thought he would lead them for long; some even assumed he would lose the job in camp to 2021 second-rounder Kyle Trask. Even after last year, all the credit seemed to go to OC Dave Canales, who rode the Bucs’ success to a head coaching gig. By now, we need to call him for what he is: Mayfield is a good NFL starting QB; he’s the common denominator in the Bucs’ two years of offensive dominance and a significant driver of their success.
The Buccaneers' skill core has been oft-injured, so players have been in and out of the lineup. In the past six games, four players have reached a threshold of at least 15% market share when they’ve played: Evans (29%), Cade Otton (20%), Sterling Shepard (16%), and Jalen McMillan (15%). Of these, only Otton and Shepard have played in all six games.
Otton’s market share numbers are still inflated by the massive shares he drew in the first two games of this sample while Evans and McMillan were out. He has cooled considerably, drawing just a 14% share in the past four games and can’t be trusted for fantasy these days when healthy; he’s a longshot to even play because of a knee injury.
McMillan, a third-round pick, has generally had good route participation when healthy but has only recently begun to make a name for himself after three TDs in the past two weeks. This tied for ninth during that span, but it comes on only the 73rd-most receiving yardage and is about two TDs over expected based on the yardage amassed. This seems bound to regress to the mean, and on a 15% target share in an offense with an average play volume, even if efficient, is a risky play.
Evans has been playing incredibly well since his return. He is fourth in percentage of team air yards and Y/RR, sixth in yards per target (min. 10 targets), and tied for third in target share and weighted opportunity rating in the past four games.
The Cowboys are in line with league-average rates for most coverage alignments, not using any defensive formation well above average. The only alignment they employ at a top-ten rate is Cover 4 at 16%. Their most common formation is Cover 3 at 30.8%, followed by Cover 1 at 24.0%.
According to Fantasy Points’ Matchup Expected Fantasy Points model, Mayfield is one of the better QBs of the week based on his performance against the types and rates of coverage the opposing defense employs. According to the model, Mike Evans ranks second in expected fantasy points per route among WRs and TEs, but no other healthy Buccaneers’ pass catcher ranks within the top 70.
The Cowboys’ specific personnel is a slightly different story. When they are at full health, their secondary is among the better units in the league, boasting recent All-Pro players DaRon Bland and Trevon Diggs, each of whom has led the NFL in interceptions for a season, and a long-time nickel CB Jourdan Lewis. Dallas has had trouble keeping everyone on the field at the same time this season; Bland wasn’t active until Week 12 after starting the year on IR; Diggs was recently put on IR and will miss the rest of the year.
That will assure more work for Amani Oruwariye, currently most famous for errantly attempting to pick up a blocked punt that had crossed the line of scrimmage, essentially handing the Bengals a win on Monday Night Football a few weeks ago. Oruwariye will likely be a target. If and when Evans can draw him one-on-one, it spells danger for Dallas, although Dallas will be fully aware of this and try to avoid it or keep Evans bracketed. Evans is expected to draw roughly a third of his snaps against Oruwariye. Everywhere else, the matchup will be far more manageable for the Cowboys.
Dallas shows up as a good matchup for receivers. They have allowed the seventh most fantasy points to WRs. However, they rank 13th in EPA per dropback and 10th in defensive success rate on dropbacks, so the efficiency stats for Dallas’s pass defense indicate they are better than they look based on gross fantasy points allowed.
While it would be better for the Cowboys to have each on the field, Bland may be the preference if they could only have one of their top corners. In just 100 snaps last year, Diggs recorded his first 70+ PFF grade (80.7), and Bland’s career PFF grades have perpetually exceeded Diggs’s. Though they are still shorthanded, the Cowboys could be better in the secondary today than they were in the first eleven games of the year.
