Jameis Winston decided at the Pro Bowl to take football even more seriously, getting himself into great shape. Those efforts paid off with a big Week One road win at Atlanta, prompting some (e.g., me) to put Winston on the way-too-early MVP radar screen. Is that crazy?
“Not at all,” Buccaneers receiver Mike Evans told PFT Live recently. “I think that’s what a lot of people should be thinking because he has the talent to do so. If we keep making plays that we’re supposed to make for him then anything is possible.”
Regardless of whether the Bucs emerge as a playoff contender and/or Winston emerges as a legitimate MVP candidate, the team has come a long way in two years, when they started Evans’ rookie season without an offensive coordinator after Jeff Tedford took a medical leave of absence.
“I still talk about it now with some of the guys,” Evans said. “We are out there just freelancing a lot of the time. We didn’t have an offensive coordinator so all our position coaches had to come together and make a game plan. It was difficult but we tried to make it work the best we could but now with Dirk [Koetter] and his experience with offense it’s crazy different.”
It’s crazy better, too. And the opportunity to put everyone on notice of how much better it is comes today, at Arizona.