Buccaneers HC told Peter King after the team’s Super Bowl win that WR Mike Evans has offered to reduce his compensation in order to help them keep the team together.
“Mike Evans is the most unselfish superstar I’ve ever met,” Arians said. “He’s told us to use some of his money if we need to contracts to keep the team together.”
The Buccaneers have a number of notable free agents to address this offseason including WR Chris Godwin, LB Lavonte David, DE Shaq Barrett, WR Antonio Brown, TE Rob Gronkowski and RB Leonard Fournette among others.
It would be rare for a top-tier talent like Evans to offer up a pay cut to help the team keep free agents, but it’s clear that the Buccaneers have a great thing going right now and every dollar will count in a year in which the cap is expected to drop from around $198 million to $180 million or so.
Evans, 27, is a former first-round pick of the Buccaneers back in 2014. He was in the final year of his four-year, $14.631 million and set to make a base salary of $690,000 for the 2017 season when he agreed to a five-year, $82.5 million extension that includes $55 million guaranteed in 2018.
Evans stands to make base salaries of $12.25 million (2021), $14 million (2022) and $13 million (2023) over the remainder of the agreement.
In 2020, Evans appeared in all 16 games for the Buccaneers and caught 70 passes for 1,006 yards receiving and 13 touchdowns.
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