LAS VEGAS – Mecole Hardman scored the game-winning touchdown of Super Bowl 58. It took some time before that registered.
On the game’s final play, the fifth-year receiver of the Kansas City Chiefs motioned toward the offensive line before pirouetting back to the right, looking back at quarterback Patrick Mahomes at the snap. The three-time Super Bowl MVP delivered a quick pass to the receiver, Hardman gathering the ball in and heading toward the pylon for a short 3-yard score that will be long remembered as the play that cemented K.C. as the NFL’s newest dynasty.
Not that Hardman realized.
“I knew I was going to get the ball, caught the football, and I blacked out,” said Hardman after the game. “I’m not going to lie, I blacked out. I (saw) Pat running towards me, and I’m thinking, ‘We just won.’ I understand now and after that.
“The rest is history.”
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Hardman can be forgiven for the lapse after a journey that must have seemed like a fever dream.
After spending his first four seasons in Kansas City, he signed a one-year deal with the New York Jets last March. He appeared on “Hard Knocks,” fawning over new teammate Aaron Rodgers and giddy at the prospect of playing with the legendary quarterback. Yet Hardman’s impact with the Jets turned out to be on par with injured Rodgers, the wideout catching one pass in six games before being traded back to the Chiefs in October. Yet even reunited with his former team and an even better QB1, injuries kept Hardman off the field for much of the season.
“This was a roller coaster,” he said. “It was a lot of ups and downs. I was going through a lot, especially with the injury, trying to start over with a new team and didn’t really play. Kansas City welcomed me back with open arms.”
Did they ever.
When healthy, Hardman adds speed to the passing game – an attribute that both makes him a deep threat and opens up room for players like tight end Travis Kelce to operate underneath the coverage. Hardman’s 52-yard catch in the second quarter seemed destined to set up Kansas City’s first touchdown, but a fumble on the next play nullified that opportunity.
Still, it’s not how you start.
“Man, I couldn’t be happier for my guy,” Kelce said of Hardman after the game. “It brought me to tears seeing that he was the man that got us there.
“Mecole, he’s one of my favorite teammates ever, because he just keeps showing up. … Found a way to win the game for us – when everybody counted him out, even the Jets counted him out. Man, we were so excited when we got him back in the building, because he’s the kind of guy that brings everybody together.”
Said Mahomes: “I’ve played with Mecole for a long time. He’s always ready for the moment … and he was he was ready for that moment in a couple (of) big plays.”
Even if Hardman didn’t necessarily process those moments in the moments, he was fully self-aware by night’s end.
“(T)o get here to the Super Bowl, and the end, and got to end how it ended,’ he ended. ‘I don’t think I want it any other way.”
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Follow USA TODAY Sports’ Nate Davis on X, formerly Twitter @ByNateDavis.