Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Mecole Hardman ripped the New York Jets during a recent appearance on The Pivot podcast. He also may have accidentally revealed that the Chiefs were guilty of tampering when they re-acquired him from the Jets at the deadline.
The whole tampering stuff aside, Hardman tore the Jets a new one for their organizational culture, saying that he because he won multiple Super Bowls with Kansas City, he knows what winning looks like, and New York does not represent it well.
Jets general manager Joe Douglas responded to Hardman’s assault on Wednesday and didn’t want to delve into any major details.
“Yeah, look, not to get into any specifics on what Mecole said,” Douglas said, via Charean Williams of Pro Football Talk. “I’ll just say, look, we were excited to sign Mecole. He was excited to obviously join our team. It was a situation that really Xavier Gipson came on for us this year, and he did an outstanding job for us. Ultimately, we made the decision to move on from Mecole. Our process of that, and Mecole, he was excited to be here, and it just didn’t work out and a lot of that has to do with Xavier.”
New York signed Hardman last spring and hoped he would be a big part of the offense, but he ultimately fell behind Gipson—who was a rookie—on the depth chart and ultimately logged just one catch for six yards as a member of the Jets.
He was then dealt to the Chiefs at the trade deadline, where he went on to total 14 receptions for 118 yards in six regular-season games. Most importantly, he caught the game-winning touchdown pass in the Super Bowl, sealing a 25-22 victory for Kansas City over the San Francisco 49ers in overtime.
Hardman, who played his collegiate football at the University of Georgia, was selected by the Chiefs in the second round of the 2019 NFL Draft.
He spent the first four years of his career in Kansas City before joining New York in free agency.
Mecole Hardman is getting set to hit free agency in a couple of weeks and is in search of a larger role. Whether or not he returns to the Chiefs remains to be seen.
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