The Buccaneers lost to the Giants 32-18 on Sunday afternoon and there were several miscues over the course of the game that they could point to as reasons why they wound up losing for the fifth time this season.
At the top of the list are Mike Evans’s hands. The Bucs wideout had eight catches for 152 yards, but left a lot of plays on the field. Evans was credited with six dropped passes by ESPN Stats & Info, which is the most in a single game by a single player in the last 10 years.
After the game, Evans mentioned the rain as a contributing factor but not one that excused his inability to hold onto the football.
“I don’t know what it is,” Evans said, via the Tampa Bay Times. “I’ve got to work on wet ball drills or something. I mean, the Giants receivers were catching them in the rain and I wasn’t and I live here. That’s unacceptable. I have to be better for this team. It was humid. It was wet, but it was humid and I kept sweating through my gloves. I put the rain gloves on and I dropped a third-down conversion and I had to keep changing them. The ball was too slick. That’s no excuse. I’ve got to catch those.”
Evans wasn’t alone when it came to dropping the ball. Doug Martin and Charles Sims both fumbled and Martin had a drop in the red zone, all of which worked to limit the rewards gained during another good day from Jameis Winston. Winston backed his teammates, saying that Evans comes through “nine times out of 10" although he probably would have been talking about a winning performance if that was true on Sunday afternoon.
