Marshon Lattimore sounded like Ivan Drago while describing a potential flare-up in his feud with Mike Evans during Sunday’s wild-card game between the Washington Commanders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“If it comes,” Lattimore, the Commanders cornerback told reporters Friday, “it comes.”
The last time Lattimore and Evans squared off was Week 6, the former still with the New Orleans Saints, who moved the cornerback to the Commanders at the NFL trade deadline. The matchup will definitely receive some attention during the broadcast.
“There’s definitely matchups all over the field that make a difference in winning and losing, and these are two elite competitors, and it’s honestly what makes coaching so much fun,” Commanders head coach Dan Quinn said Wednesday. “Those aren’t the only two that are going to be absolutely battling for it. It may be the only ones that the networks may show, but let me tell you, there’ll be a lot of guys that are really going to go for it. And it does make that part fun.”
Washington traded three draft picks to acquire Lattimore in hopes he’d defend an opposing team’s best receiver come playoff time. They also planned on him having more games under his belt with the team; Lattimore didn’t suit up his first four games with the Commanders while nursing a hamstring injury and debuted against the Saints on Dec. 15. The next week, against the Philadelphia Eagles, he re-aggravated the injury and sat out the rest of the regular season.
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He returned to practice this week as a full participant and rested Friday.
“It’s just another game, just to go out there and help my team,” Lattimore told reporters Friday. “Really, I’m just trying to lock him down. All the other stuff, it is what it is.”
Evans, who eclipsed the 1,000-yard mark for the 11th straight season (tying Jerry Rice for longest streak all time) and Lattimore met 12 times during the regular season while Lattimore was playing for the Saints. The five-time Pro Bowl selection had 16 catches for 309 yards and three touchdowns in those games. In 13 games head-to-head opposite Lattimore, Evans averaged 2.6 catches for 43.6 yards.
“I just gotta be at my best. Because he’s a really good player,” Evans told reporters this week. “Obviously, we’ve had a lot of matchups. We know each other really well. If he’s playing, I look forward to the matchup.”
Lattimore wants to guard the opposing team’s best player, he said, “the best versus the best.”
In Week 9 of 2017, former Bucs quarterback Jameis Winston instigated Lattimore by poking the back of his helmet as Lattimore lingered near the Bucs sideline. Lattimore shoved Winston, and Evans decked the cornerback. The wideout wasn’t ejected but served a one-game suspension the next week.
The season-opener of the 2020 campaign featured the two of them staying engaged physically after a run play and Lattimore shoving Evans from behind after the latter turned away. Evans responded with a shove powerful enough that it knocked off Lattimore’s helmet. Lattimore was assessed a 15-yard penalty.
‘They’re both great players and they both like to compete,’ Bucs coach Todd Bowles said Monday of the rivalry. ‘Mike is a pro and he understands what’s at stake. He understands the game. Nothing really needs to be said about that.’
The two incited a bench-clearing incident in Week 3 of the 2022 season by getting into it first with Tom Brady and Leonard Fournette, and Evans once again took the opportunity to send Lattimore flying. Both were ejected and Evans, who threw punches during the ensuing melee, was again hit with a one-game ejection.
“Long as, you know, it’s within the play,” Evans said of his battles with Lattimore, according to the Tampa Bay Times, in October. “I’ve done a bad job in the past of making it go over the play when I shouldn’t have. But I’m more mature now and our team is focused on playing winning ball, and you can’t play winning ball when you get kicked out and things like that. But I definitely want to have that fire and be physical and a little chirping never hurts. But you definitely have got to be smart. You can’t play winning ball when you get kicked out and things like that.”
Those are just three incidents that have gone to the next level, outside of the typical jawing a receiver and defensive back may do throughout a game.
“I want to be physical just off the simple fact of what happened, of course, but I want to be physical with anybody,” Lattimore said. “Just the extra level of it because of the past and all that, it’s just really being out there, it ain’t really about the mental game. You’re gonna know I’m here, you know what I’m saying?”