The Mike Evans dream is dead for the Chiefs (if it was ever alive)

For a short while there, some of us (and perhaps it's those of us on the dreamer side of the spectrum) were hopeful that things might work out between the Kansas City Chiefs and wide receiver Mike Evans. He said he wanted all the right things. Alas it was not to be.

Apparently real NFL free agency is a lot less like Madden than we want it to be sometimes.

For those of us who have been craving a very real game-changing wide receiver on this team since the Tyreek Hill trade went down, Evans represented the best potential option on the market in quite some time. Unfortunately the Buccaneers also knew this and locked him up for the next two years.

On Monday, Evans and his representatives reached a new deal with Tampa Bay that will keep him on the roster for another two years—and that might just take him to the end of his professional career.

To be sure, the Bucs will pay for it with a total of $35 million guaranteed over the next two years. It's also worth a potential $52 million, and that total was always going to be too rich for a Chiefs team that's struggling to cobble together less than that to keep L'Jarius Sneed on the same defense as Chris Jones.

Still, it's tough to see the brightest door this offseason closed in a way. Last offseason, the Chiefs chased after DeAndre Hopkins and Odell Beckham Jr. to varying degrees and watched both players sign with the Titans and Ravens instead. In the past, they've even reached for the likes of Josh Reynolds and got spurned and it took them twice to convince JuJu Smith-Schuster to climb on board.

Evans, on his part, said the right things, but that was likely all a leverage ploy and some of us should have called it as such. Staying home was the path of least resistance and the Bucs were happy to line it with cash. Evans said all the things about playing for an elite quarterback and he doesn't even know if he'll have Baker Mayfield throwing him the ball.

So now the dream is dead, if it was ever alive, that the Chiefs could put Evans with Patrick Mahomes and watch the ensuing magic happen. That's okay, we suppose. Two consecutive Lombardi Trophies are in the case to remind us that the likes of Justin Watson and Mecole Hardman can get the job done with Mahomes and Travis Kelce around.