Mecole Hardman on what it will take for Kansas City Chiefs to get back to Super Bowl
Two days before he was crushing Bengals cornerback Eli Apple on Twitter, Chiefs wide receiver Mecole Hardman joined ESPN’s “First Take” show on Friday.
Hardman talked with Stephen A. Smith and Charly Arnolt about the AFC Championship Game loss to the Bengals and the Chiefs’ future.
Hardman noted the Chiefs’ offense put pressure on the defense in the second half of the AFC Championship Game.
“Listen, it started off great,” Hardman said. “The first half was cool. And the second half, we just didn’t score. We put our defense in bad situations. You know, that high-powered offense of Cincinnati, you can’t stop them forever. I think it’s just on us, because we had to score in the second half and we didn’t.”
Smith asked why opposing defenses were able to slow the Chiefs offense at times this season, something that had not happened during quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ first three seasons as KC’s starter.
Hardman pointed back to the 31-9 loss to the Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV.
“It comes from defenses changing their schemes up, just giving different looks, figuring things out that give us problems,” Hardman said. “Tampa Bay kind of thought of that last year in the Super Bowl with the kind of defense that they played. So I think it was just the adjustment factor of trying to figure out the different looks that all the defenses were throwing at us. So definitely there were times where we couldn’t get anything going.
“But I think when we started figuring things out that’s when we started rolling. As you know, we went on an eight-game winning streak. So I feel like that’s when things started rolling in when we started figuring everything out.”
Arnolt wondered what it will take for the Chiefs to get back to the Super Bowl next season.
Hardman noted the Chiefs have some players who will be free agents, without naming names.
“First, we’ve got to figure out the team, make sure we get the right pieces back,” Hardman said. “We’ve got a couple of guys we need to sign or a couple of guys we need to extend and everything. So after that, when we get all the pieces together and get to training camp and get right, it shouldn’t be too hard, because we’ve got nothing to do that we don’t know how to do and just take it one game at a time.”
This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 8:59 AM.
