Super Bowl LV Bold Prediction: Getting a handle on postseason opportunities

You’ve followed along all season. Now we’re bringing it to you individually. The Bucs Nation staff will be giving you a series of bold predictions for the game one by one, day by day as we head into Super Bowl LV between the Buccaneers and the Chiefs where we sum it all up for you and give you the chance to vote for your favorite bold prediction the morning of the big game.

For my final bold prediction of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ historic season, I’m leaning on the big names to show up on the biggest stage.

We all know the Super Bowl MVP award tends to go to the quarterback. In fact, if you just turned voting age in 2020, you’ve only been alive for seven non-quarterback Super Bowl MVPs.

No, I’m not predicting Tom Brady as the game’s MVP, although he might be. Just because passers tend to get the most glory, doesn’t mean there aren’t skill position players making their marks on the biggest sports night in America, too.

This is where my bold prediction comes in, and where Buccaneers wide receivers Mike Evans and Chris Godwin enter the discussion.

Photo by Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Their first trip to the postseason has been great. For starters, they got to the Super Bowl in their first crack at the tournament. And that’s really what matters here.

However, getting there hasn’t been a clean endeavor for either of them. In the regular season, Evans and Godwin combined to have just nine dropped passes in 2020. There are eight NFL wide receivers who had more individually, just to put some perspective on it.

Those nine drops on 152 catchable pass attempts (according to Sports Info Solutions) means just 6% of passes intended for the duo resulted in the receivers themselves being the cause of an incompletion.

In the postseason, the percentage of dropped passes between the two has risen, and PFF currently credits the duo with eight drops on forty-seven combined targets. Dropping passes at a rate of 17%.

It’s not that the two have forgotten how to catch passes. They’ve both still made great plays, and amazing catches, throughout the postseason as well.

But the Super Bowl is a whole different animal. Every mistake is magnified, and only the best of the best can hold up the Lombardi at the end of it all.

This is why Mike Evans and Chris Godwin won’t drop a single pass on Super Bowl Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs, all while combining for fifteen or more targets between the two of them.

Oh, and one of them will surpass Danny Amendola and become the receiver to have the most yards while catching passes from Tom Brady in a Super Bowl, needing 153-yards or more to do it.

So there it is. My last bold predictions of the year. Mike Evans and Chris Godwin receive fifteen or more targets without a drop between them, and one of them goes for 153-yards or more.

Against the Kansas City Chiefs.

In the Super Bowl.

Score Prediction:
Bucs 42, Chiefs 38