Bengals rookie Chris Evans about to get a bigger role on special teams?
Time to celebrate. Well, somewhat.
Fans have been clamoring for Chris Evans to get more snaps at running back over Samaje Perine behind Joe Mixon. While this news doesn’t necessarily reflect a change there, it’s at least better than nothing.
In his latest quick hits piece, Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com talked about the Bengals having to re-shape their special teams units with KR Brandon Wilson tearing his ACL and LB Akeem Davis-Gaither injuring his foot. Both are potentially done for the season.
As one of the moves special teams coordinator Darrin Simmons is attempting to make to rebuild the unit, he is going to take a look at Evans at kick returner.
This won’t fully be his job, however. Cornerback and punt returner Darius Phillips is likely going to get first crack at it, but Evans will have his opportunities:
“You really can’t just plug-and-play one person to (replace a high-caliber player). It’ll be a variety of guys,” Simmons said. “You saw a little bit the other day, Tre jumped in there for us as a gunner, we had Mike Thomas who has made a living in this league playing gunner. We’ll have to fill his role with a variety of people probably on kickoff and the same thing on punt return. When you lose a core guy like that it stings, it hurts, but that’s life in this league too. Everybody loses players on a week-to-week basis. You hate it when it happens to one of your core guys like that, but what it provides is an opportunity for one of the other guys to step up. That’s how Brandon got to play in this league. He started off on PUP and when he got an opportunity he took it and ran with it.”
All it takes is just getting on the field. Perhaps this is the start of something for Evans. We’ll see.
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