TAMPA, Fla. _ Mike Evans stood in the corner of the end zone during practice one Friday with his feet planted and both arms pumping, pausing only to catch pass after pass thrown slightly behind him from quarterback Tom Brady.
"We caught 50 back shoulders," Evans said.
Two days later against Carolina, Brady saw the Panthers in zone coverage and signaled to Evans to run a stutter and go against cornerback Donte Jackson.
Brady pumped faked to Evans, but Jackson didn't bite. That's when Brady threw a back-shoulder pass to the Pro Bowl receiver, who caught it at the 3-yard line and took one stride to the goal line for a touchdown.
"It was the same ball in the game," Evans said. "It was cool getting that from the practice field to the game."
These days, it's a victory when Evans and Brady can be working from the same playbook, much less the same page.
When the Bucs signed Brady, they wanted him to pack up all the tools he had used during his career at New England and bring them to Tampa Bay. The precision. The passion. The sideline stares.
Everything but the offense. That was the only thing the Bucs weren't willing to accept from Brady's 20-year career with the Patriots.
As a result, there's no real timetable for Brady's mastery of coach Bruce Arians' playbook in Tampa Bay.
"I've said before that at times it looks like he's a guy running somebody else's offense," quarterbacks coach Clyde Christensen said. "Each week, each day, it gets closer to him running his offense. Our offense. All of our offense.
"I think I get the privilege of seeing there's stretches of practice where you go, 'This is really, really going to be good.' I believe that with all my heart. I don't know that it's (happening) this Sunday, I don't know if it's this month."
Or, dare we say, even this year.
