Mike Evans’s long run with the Buccaneers ended when he signed with the 49ers as a free agent last week and Bucs General Manager Jason Licht shared his thoughts on the wideout’s departure on Wednesday.
In terms of Tampa’s interest in having Evans return for a 13th season, Licht said, via Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times, that “we had a verbal agreement that [Evans] could be here as long as he wants.” Licht said he felt the Bucs “did everything we could” before the wideout opted to sign with the Niners.
Licht added that there were no hard feelings about Evans deciding to move on and that he is “happy for Mike and happy he found a place he wants to be.”
“I don’t feel betrayed,” Licht said. “He earned the right to make the decision . . . he loves this team. He loves everything about it . . . I think he wanted a new challenge.”
Licht selected Emeka Egbuka in the first round of last year’s draft, so the Bucs were planning for the future of the wide receiver group while Evans was still in the building. Egbuka, Chris Godwin and Jalen McMillan will now make up the top of the team’s receiver group while Evans tries to find the same kind of success with his new club.
Before Mike Evans picked his next team, multiple reports suggested that he was being offered $27 million per year, or more. If that’s the case, Evans took a major discount to play for the 49ers.
Yes, it was widely characterized by the usual suspects as a three-year, $60.4 million deal. The truth, as it often does, paints a different picture.
Here are the full deals, per a source with knowledge of the terms:
1. Signing bonus: $12 million.
2. 2026 base salary: $1.3 million, fully guaranteed.
3. 2026 workout bonus: $150,000, fully guaranteed but must be earned.
4. 2026 per-game active roster bonus: $850,000, fully guaranteed but must be earned.
5. 2027 option bonus: $12.5 million.
6. 2027 base salary: $1.5 million, guaranteed for injury at signing.
7. 2027 workout bonus: $150,000.
8. 2027 per-game active roster bonus: $850,000.
9. 2028 option bonus: $10.95 million.
10. 2028 base salary: $1.7 million.
11. 2028 workout bonus: $150,000.
12. 2028 per-game active roster bonus: $850,000.
It works out to a base package of $42.5 million. The APY is $14.167 million. That puts him near the bottom of the top 30 among receivers.
Could he have gotten more elsewhere? Maybe. He seemed to be determined to play for the 49ers, even with the 13.3-percent California tax rate. (In Florida, it’s zero.)
We’re still trying to get the details of the incentive/escalator package that supposedly makes the $42.5 million deal worth “up to” $60.4 million. For now, those details remain as elusive as the basic contract details had been, for more than a week after the agreement was reached.
The Buccaneers are bringing back one of their offensive linemen.
Tampa Bay announced on Monday that Dan Feeney has re-signed with the club.
Terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed.
Feeney, 31, joined the Buccaneers in September when the club signed him off of Buffalo’s practice squad. He appeared in 12 games with 10 starts for the Buccaneers last season, playing 84 percent of offensive snaps in games played.
A third-round pick in 2017, Feeney has appeared in 132 games with 75 starts for the Chargers, Jets, Bears, Vikings, and Buccaneers.
A day before Seahawks G.M. John Schneider addressed the potential impact of Washington’s looming “millionaire tax” on the defending Super Bowl champions, Simms and I stumbled into a conversation about state income taxes during PFT Live.
The spark came from the trade that has sent defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa from the Cowboys (and Texas) to the 49ers (and California). In his last stop, there was no state income tax. At his new team, he’ll lose 13.3 percent, off the top.
It’s not as clean and simple as every penny of compensation being taxed, or not, by the state where the team plays. For road trips, the game check is taxed by the state in which the game happens. It gets more complicated as to per-game roster bonuses. As we hear it, some states try to tax the visiting player based also on a percentage of the full-year roster bonuses and/or the prorated portion of the signing bonus for the season in which the game is played.
And, yes, the lack of state income tax becomes a selling point in free agency, which explains Schneider’s concerns about Washington’s tax rate for millionaires increasing from 0.0 percent to 9.9. But, as Odighizuwa will learn the hard way, that doesn’t matter if the free-agent contract also doesn’t include a no-trade clause.
Regardless, the variations in state income tax create an imbalance as it relates to the most important aspect of anyone’s pay — how much they take home.
Simms mentioned on Thursday’s PFT Live that he heard something interesting from someone in the league who saw the tax discussion from the day before. (And, yes, plenty of people in the league watch PFT Live — probably because it features no phony debates, no false praise, no reckless hype, no minced words, and no performative antics.) There’s an argument to be made that the salary cap should take state income taxes into account.
It would be complicated, given that taxes depend on where games are played. Still, every team has eight or nine home games per year. That’s roughly half of the compensation, taxed based on where the team is located.
The real question is whether teams should get more to spend, given that more of what is paid will end up being taken off the top by the state government. Some teams may not want to do it, since having a higher cap means having a higher floor means spending more money that otherwise would be siphoned away as pure profit.
And the numbers would be significant. At a 2026 salary cap of $301.2 million, providing the Rams, Chargers, and 49ers with a 13.3-percent bump would push the cap to $341.2 million for those teams.
The deeper question is whether state income taxes make a competitive difference. As noted the other day, most of the teams in the no-tax states haven’t been to a Super Bowl this century. (The Seahawks and Buccaneers are the exception; the Titans, Cowboys, Dolphins, Jaguars, and Texans are not.)
Part of the problem is that most players don’t fret about state income taxes, even if they should. Players focus mainly on annual average, the true locker-room measuring stick that determines the pecking order among the most and least valuable players.
Although it would indeed be difficult to come up with the right way to determine cap credits, since the total tax burden depends on where games are played, that would be doable. The bigger challenge would be to get all teams in states with income tax to agree to a higher cap in order to account for it.
News flash: Not every team is as obsessed with winning as they pretend to be. For many owners, it’s about profit. Having more money to spend means having less to buy giant yachts or that much-needed tenth home. Especially since the owners of the teams in the high-tax states are also paying those increased rates, too.
Just kidding. The ultra-rich have seemingly cracked the code on eating nearly every ounce of what they kill. Which is another reason why the owners of the teams in the high-tax states won’t want to have more to spend — even if they have to say they do.
Buccaneers General Manager Jason Licht broke a bit of free agent news on Friday.
Licht announced on social media that the team has agreed to terms on a new contract with tight end Ko Kieft. Licht also made Kieft a fifth-round pick in 2022.
Kieft only missed one game during his first three seasons in Tampa, but he suffered a leg injury in Week 3 last season and was not able to return to the lineup. He has eight catches for 82 yards and two touchdowns when he has been in the lineup.
The Bucs also re-signed Cade Otton this week. He joins Kieft, Payne Durham and Devin Culp on the roster at tight end.
