Marshon Lattimore gets real about his rivalry with Mike Evans and playing against him in the playoffs
Things have been pointing in this direction all week long, but the 13th installment of the Marshon Lattimore-Mike Evans rivalry is officially on as of Friday. Their history is well-known, even outside of their respective teams. You didn't have to follow the New Orleans Saints and/or Tampa Bay Buccaneers closely to understand the beef between […]
Things have been pointing in this direction all week long, but the 13th installment of the Marshon Lattimore-Mike Evans rivalry is officially on as of Friday.
Their history is well-known, even outside of their respective teams. You didn't have to follow the New Orleans Saints and/or Tampa Bay Buccaneers closely to understand the beef between the two Pro Bowlers.
The game of football is competitive enough in its own right, but when you have two elite players like these guys, who also are two of the game's most competitive players, it's easy to see why things get heated like they have.
"Those are the [matchups] I want – the best versus the best," Lattimore told NBC 4 Sport's JP Finlay on Friday. "That's what I look forward to, just going against top opponents. I don't want nobody, you know, ain't gonna be like, Oh, he wasn't really that good, you know. I want people that's known to be good, you know I'm saying, and see how I line up against them. That's why I'm here…
"… I want to be physical just off the simple fact of what happened, of course, but I want to be physical with anybody. [There's] just an extra level of it, you know, just because of the past and all that…I'm just trying to lock him down. All the other stuff – it is what it is. You know, if it comes, it comes. If it don't, you know, I'm just here to help my team win."
When it comes to locking Evans down like he states, Lattimore has done a very good job of doing that over the previous 12 games. When matched up on Evans, he's held him to 50 receiving yards or less in 11 of the 12 matchups and Evans has caught more than two passes in a single game, with Lattimore in coverage, just once. This is over the course of 30 targets throughout the aforementioned 12 games.
It'll be interesting to see how the Commanders deploy him on Sunday. It's likely he shadows Evans for the majority of the game, but will he follow him inside when the Bucs put him in the slot? That's a total mismatch for Noah Igbinoghene, the team's main nickelback and it's also a mismatch for Mike Sainristil, who was the primary nickel before he was moved to the perimeter.
Either way, Lattimore is a clear upgrade for the Commanders secondary and it'll be interesting to see if he can keep Evans from putting up something similar, or better, than the five catches, 61-yards, and two touchdowns he racked up in Week 1.
History says yes, but as we all know you're only as good as your last game in this line of work. We'll see if Lattimore can continue his successful streak and if he does, then the Commanders have a really good shot at pulling off an upset in the Wild Card Round.
