10 wide receivers Chicago Bears could pry away from other teams

4. Could the Chicago Bears add Mike Evans?

When Tom Brady announced his retirement, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ phones probably blew up with teams looking to pick the pieces apart from a contending roster. The Bucs may be looking to reset as they transition to a new quarterback. Mike Evans is 30, and while he is a Bucs legend, if they are taking a year or two to figure out their quarterback, there is probably no better time to move on than now.

The issue with his salary is that the Bucs would eat $21M if they trade him before June 1. If they wait until June 1, they would clear $14.5M. So, they obviously want to wait, but what team will wait through free agency and the draft just to hope to trade for Mike Evans?

Perhaps an agreement could come beforehand, and not get processed until later, or perhaps the Chicago Bears do strike out this offseason and still need someone before training camp. At that point, the cost to acquire Evans would be even lower, because it is all about the Bucs saving cap space.

At the same time, if the Bucs do reset, they may just eat one year of bad money to reset their books for the long term. In this case, the cost to add Evans would be a lot more. Evans could also restructure his deal, but it would be hard to see him agreeing to do that unless he picked his destination. All things are on the table and the Mike Evans situation has to be followed.