One of the Kansas City Chiefs free agents appears to be playing the field.
After a Chicago Bears podcaster a video of wide receiver Mecole Hardman catching a deep bomb from quarterback Justin Fields in college — captioned: “Here’s a soon to be Bears WR catching passes from Justin Fields back at Georgia” — the KC speedster with a short message that quickly went viral.
👀👀👀
— Mecole Hardman Jr. ()
“ 👀👀👀,” Hardman voiced flirtatiously on the social media app to the tune of 5.4K likes and 500-plus retweets — as well as nearly 700K views.
Chiefs WR Mecole Hardman Appears to Be Departing in NFL Free Agency
With the Chiefs’ focus on retaining WR1 JuJu Smith-Schuster and special teams ace Justin Watson, most assume that Hardman is as good as gone in free agency.
The former second-round selection and two-time Super Bowl champion is coming off an injury-ridden campaign where he only appeared in eight games, starting five. Despite that, he could be in for a major salary bump considering the barren market at wide receiver in 2023.
Spotrac actually projected that the KC playmaker might earn north of $10.3 million per year in average annual salary this free agency cycle. Their estimated four-year deal at that rate would net Hardman $41.558 million, which would certainly price out the Chiefs.
If that were to happen, why not the Bears? Former KC executive Ryan Poles is the current general manager in Chicago, and we’ve already seen ex-Chiefs wideouts like Byron Pringle and Daurice Fountain join the NFC franchise since he was hired. Hardman could be the next domino to fall.
The other part of the equation is — does Kansas City care? No offense to Hardman, but the Chiefs seemingly replaced him the day they traded for Kadarius Toney after drafting Skyy Moore last April.
Those moves came on top of Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling signings, making it plainly obvious that they did not trust Hardman could be relied upon to fill the void left by superstar Tyreek Hill. In the end, KC was right, and now the former Georgia star will most likely leave Chiefs Kingdom for the highest bidder.
This tweet is just the latest confirmation of that.
Source:: Heavy.com