Dear all Studio Executives: What if there was a show on ESPN called “Worst Take” — a parody of “First Take” — and the premise was just running down the very worst sports takes of the day/week.

Kind of like Joel McHale/Greg Kinnear/90s Era “Talk Soup” on E! … but for sports. In this hypothetical universe, it could run every day from 3:30 a.m. to 4 a.m.

On this hypothetical show, we could lead things off with The Ringer’s Diante Lee, an astute NFL mind in most cases, putting something audacious out into the world last week, when he said Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Mike Evans doesn’t look like a future Pro Football Hall of Famer.

“I love Mike Evans, but for me to say he’s a HOF player would be to say that Terry McLaurin is on pace to do the same … and I’m sorry I just don’t see it that way,” Lee wrote on his official X account this week.

“I think he checks enough boxes to get in, but I agree. For all the receivers we’ve seen in the last 20 years I don’t know if he’s a sure case for HOF. Maybe I’m just too strict.”

While most knowledgeable football fans will disagree with Lee’s assessment (and the McLaurin comparison), the analytics show there might actually be some smoke behind what Lee is trying to tell us.

Pro Football HOFm Puts Evans’ Career in Perspective

One way to gauge any NFL player’s Hall of Fame potential is to use Pro Football Reference’s Hall of Fame Monitor — perhaps the most objective way to see if someone should be in or out.

From PFR: “The Pro Football Reference Hall of Fame Monitor (HOFm) is a metric designed to estimate a player’s chances of making the Pro Football Hall of Fame using AV, Pro Bowls, All-Pros, championships, and various stat milestones … a score of 100 is around the average modern-era inductee.”

Evans’ current HOFm rating of 73.41 puts him far behind any modern era inductee save for Sterling Sharpe, who was inducted in 2025 after playing his last game in 1994.

Evans isn’t even first out of active NFL wide receivers; he’s fourth behind Tyreek Hill (93.01), DeAndre Hopkins (77.16) and Davante Adams (74.93).

‘Disrespectful’ Comparing Evans to McLaurin

While Evans and McLaurin are both expected to be 2 of the NFL’s best wide receivers in 2025, comparing their careers is mad disrespectful.

Stats wise, Evans and McLaurin are actually on similar paths.

Evans has set the NFL record by having at least 1,000 yards receiving in each of his first 11 seasons, which also tied Jerry Rice’s NFL career record of 11 consecutive 1,000 yard seasons — a record he’s keen to break in 2025.

McLaurin had his fifth consecutive 1,000 yard season in 2024 and was perilously short of having at least 1,000 yards in each of his first 6 seasons with 919 receiving yards as a rookie in 2019.

The difference? McLaurin has played on exactly one team with a winning record, in 2024. Evans has won a Super Bowl and is trying to make the playoffs for the sixth consecutive season in 2025.

That should count for something, right?