Mecole Hardman film review
Examining the progress the Chiefs speedster made his rookie year, and his potential moving forward
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It’s hard to make an impression on offense when you play in Kansas City.
With an offensive skill position group featuring Travis Kelce, Tyreek Hill, Sammy Watkins, Demarcus Robinson, and Damien Williams, it’s almost impossible to flash. It’s like being in a picture next to Dwayne Johnson; nobody is looking at you.
Rookie wide receiver Mecole Hardman faced the additional challenge of being a rookie in Chiefs head coach Andy Reid’s offense. Even crazier, 2019 was only his third season at the position, which is the football equivalent of conducting a felony jury trial after a single year of law school.
Reid generally requires receivers to know every receiver spot before he lets them see extensive playing time, but Hardman was able to get on the field through a combination of bad luck for the Chiefs in the form of injuries and undeniable talent. He accrued a respectable 538 yards and 6 touchdowns on just 26 catches, with a 20.7 yards per reception average that showed how he was able to make an impact without touching the ball much: big plays.
(UPDATE NOTE: I have now figured out a process to get video clips in the form of gifs directly embedded to the page. So future articles will have video clips done that way, rather than tweets. Thanks all for the suggestions!)
To call Hardman “fast” is to understate how explosive he is. There are a lot of fast players at the NFL level. There are very few who can make the secondary players defending them look like mediocre athletes. Hardman is one of those players.
A great deal was made of Patrick Mahomes’ miraculous throw on this play (and for good reason, as it appeared to be some sort of witchcraft), so much so that Hardman’s blinding athleticism goes unnoticed. He catches the ball at nearly a full stop with a pair of defenders who have good speed in position to corral him. His acceleration and top-end speed leave them in the dust in a way that rarely happens at the NFL level.
In addition to having unique speed, Hardman also possesses some ball skills and toughness down the field, able to track the ball in the air and make tough catches despite contact.
As the Chiefs enter the 2020 season, Hardman could play a key role in taking an offense that is already the most consistent and explosive in the NFL to an even higher level. Whether he does so will depend in part on his progression as a player and what traits he can show on a week-to-week basis. To try and figure out whether and how much Hardman developed over last season, as well as discern just how extensive his role in the offense was, I went back and charted every route he ran in 4 games throughout the season: Weeks 2, 7, 16, and the AFC Championship game.
A “win” for these purposes is a route where Hardman’s work against man or zone coverage was what resulted in him being open, rather than being schemed to success or failure (some routes are decoys and bring receivers directly into coverage on purpose, and so they aren’t penalized for being part of a combination).
In terms of the numbers, the most interesting tidbit was that Hardman was able to bring his “losses” way down as the year progressed. This was in part due to teams playing him differently (which we’ll discuss later) and having fewer pure man coverage opportunities, but also due to his own improvement as a route runner and an increased comfort against contact as the year wore on.
In Week 2, Hardman was noticeably uncomfortable against physical coverage, without many counters in either his movement or hand-fighting.
While Hardman drew a holding flag here, it’s a good example of his issues with contact early. He initiates contact aggressively at the snap, but isn’t able to release after driving the defender backwards. There’s no noticeable hand or shoulder movement to break free from the hold, something he needed to work on to deal with the grabby tendencies of defenders playing the Chiefs.
Later on in the year, Hardman still had work to do but demonstrated more comfort when defenders tried pushing/grabbing to jostle him or keep him in place.
A couple of subtle things here demonstrate Hardman’s improvement as the year moved along. He alters the angle of his route to take him to the side of his defender, something he didn’t do as smoothly early on. He also dips his shoulder around the contact while maintaining speed, preventing the defender from getting a good shove or grabbing ahold of him while he runs by.
Hardman’s ability to deal with aggressive press coverage at the line is going to be pivotal in year 2 of his development. Teams are only going to get more physical with Chiefs receivers, as there really aren’t any other options to try to slow down the Mahomes-led offense. Hardman continues to need to work on his initial release at the line of scrimmage and hand-fighting. The good news is that teams take a massive risk playing him close to the line, because if he’s able to gain an edge they risk giving up separation quickly.
Hardman’s speed is unique, of the type that only a handful of other players in the league can challenge. There’s a legitimate argument to be made that outside of Hill, there’s not a faster player at the pro level. When cornerbacks are asked to turn and run with him, it’s rarely even a contest.
Hardman doesn’t have Hill’s jittery “instant top speed” ability, but he does accelerate much faster than any defender he’s matched up against. Just as importantly, when he’s going all out he may actually be faster than even Hill.
This singular trait is worth discussing at length because it forced teams to alter the way they played the Chiefs when Hardman was on the field. Despite the fact that he didn’t receive many targets (41, 5th on the team and barely ahead of running backs Williams and LeSean McCoy), Hardman managed 13.1 yards per target due to the fact that he gained 25 yards or more on 9 of his catches. On his 6 touchdowns, Hardman averaged 47.8 yards.
In addition to being the fastest non-Hill player on every field, Hardman turns good plays into better ones by having surprising balance through contact.
Hardman is often able to wreck angles opposing defenders take when trying to chase him, which results in arm tackles or defenders diving rather than squaring up. Despite a slender build, Hardman consistently runs through contact when it isn’t straight-on, and has the balance to extend plays for additional yards after taking more direct hits.
The threat of Hardman making a house call from anywhere on the field forced teams to adjust as the year went along. Despite him being the 4th or 5th option in Kansas City, defenses started to bend around him for fear of giving up a big play. The problem for opposing teams is that there are too many other playmakers in Kansas City to try and “cheat” towards Hardman.
This is an excellent route combination called by Reid, but it works in part thanks to the threat of Hardman over the middle of the field. The deep safety doesn’t take his eyes off Hardman, leaving Hill alone to work one-on-one against an overmatched cornerback.
Forcing defenses to make impossible decisions is a Reid specialty, but it requires legitimate threats that opponents respect. Hardman’s ability to win individually in a way that results in big plays makes him someone defenses must account for every time he’s on the field, even if he isn’t targeted.
When 2019 began, it was obvious that Hardman was relatively new to the receiver position and didn’t run a wide variety of routes in college. Despite having naturally quick feet and a lot of smoothness in his hips and upper body, his routes often became rounded or involved multiple steps too many. At times, he seemed out of sync with Mahomes due to some of these issues.
Here, Hardman ends up in a different place than Mahomes expects him to be, and at a different time. The ball arrives earlier than he expects and short of where he ends up. While it’s impossible to say exactly where the route called for him to be, given where and when the ball got there it appears that the extra couple of steps Hardman needed to cut cost him the opportunity to make a play here despite his acceleration giving him easy separation. It’s a minor issue, but one that popped up in various routes that required Hardman to plant and cut.
As the season wore on, Hardman’s route running started to look crisper. He still wasn’t asked to run a great variety of routes, but when he was asked to stop/start he looked more comfortable and was able to do it faster.
Hardman was not consistent with his cuts by the end of the year, but the pendulum had definitely begun to swing in terms of how often he cut quickly and decisively. An offseason of working on his feet during routes should serve him well, and by all appearances he’s doing just that.
Hardman will need to continue to refine his game, learning to alter his speed throughout routes depending on where defenders are rather than going full tilt the entire play in addition to learning the ins and outs of releases/cuts as a receiver. These are things that can only come with time, and NFL history is littered with receivers who possessed superior physical talent but never managed to break through to become consistent contributors. So it’s no sure thing to that he’ll become more than he was last season: A dangerous home run threat whose primary role is to stretch the field or take the ball on sweeps/screens.
On the plus side, even if Hardman doesn’t develop at all he’s still a valuable component to an offense that’s predicated on speed, and his improvement as a rookie shows that he has the potential to refine his game. If he takes even a marginal step forward in the subtleties of the position, he has the ability to surpass every receiver on the roster but Hill in impact. And if you blink, you might miss it.
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One question I've gotten is whether I can make it to where videos are directly embedded so that you can watch the videos without the tweets taking you to twitter. I am finding that out as we speak and will update when I know more!
Seth, I have followed your work from SB Nation, to The Athletic, and now here. Keep up with your radio and podcast appearances as well. Good job man you’ve turned yourself into a STAPLE of chiefs kingdom. Even out here in northwest Kansas your work comes up in casual chiefs conversation. Thanks for all the top notch content man!