Tampa Bay Restructuring WR Mike Evans' Deal To Free Up Cap Space

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers may have just won their second Super Bowl championship, but by NFL standards, they are still dirt poor.

The NFLPA report confirms that the Bucs have just $270,339 in cap space, dead last in the NFL.

By comparison, the team with the most cap money available is the Jacksonville Jaguars, which makes sense since they won just one game last season. They reportedly have $36,078,938 available.

So what's the fiscal game plan for the Bucs to clear up some money?

A report from ESPN claims that Tampa Bay and wide out Mike Evans are working on his current contract, hoping that will get them a decent amount of cap space.

Evans carries around a contract with a team-high $16.637 million cap hit. Evans has three years left on a five-year, $82.5 million extension. The Bucs can convert much of that to a signing bonus and prorate the money against the cap.

The 28-year-old is due $12.25 mil in base salary, which would bump the Bucs from last in salary cap space to almost middle of the pack.

There's no chance that Evans will be playing elsewhere this season, so it would be wise to get a new extension done while he's under team control. It would also help the team a great deal money-wise.