While with the Kansas City Chiefs, wide receiver Mecole Hardman showed splash-play ability (average length of touchdown reception over those four seasons was 25.8 yards), but volume limitations held him to just one 100-yard game and resulted in him finishing with under 65 receiving yards in 86% of his games. This past offseason, the 25-year-old signed with the New York Jets and will have the opportunity to compete for the WR2 role in this Aaron Rodgers-led offense.
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Mecole Hardman’s Fantasy Outlook
Projecting Hardman’s role in Gotham is tough. Garrett Wilson is the unquestioned WR1 in town, but there are a handful of options vying for that WR2 role. Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb have the benefit of having spent time with Rodgers in Green Bay, while Corey Davis is still somehow just 28 years old and coming off a season in which he averaged a career-high 16.8 yards per catch.
- Allen Lazard: Scored on 14 of 100 catches over the past two seasons with GB.
- Randall Cobb: Turns 33 in August, three straight seasons under 40 catches.
- Corey Davis: 6’3” downfield option, yet to clear 65 catches in his career.
Logic would seem to point to Lazard as the complement to Wilson, and I think that’s right. But it’s far from a certainty, and that’s where throwing a dart on Hardman makes some sense.
During his time with Rodgers, Lazard spent some time in the slot, but his value was more on the perimeter, where he averaged 15.5% more yards per target than when tied in tight.
That would be the avenue in which Hardman could thrive. Over his final 17 games in Kansas City, 61.2% of Hardman’s receptions came when lined up in the slot, a nice little uptick from 50% for his career up to that point.
Of course, he’ll need to edge Cobb for this role. But if Hardman can’t beat out a veteran that has missed 16 games over the past three seasons and has reached 700 receiving yards just once since 2015, then he wasn’t going to be a fantasy football asset anyway.
How Many Targets Are Available in New York?
During his time in Green Bay, Nathaniel Hackett’s Packers ranked 21st in pass rate. At face value, that sounds ominous, but remember that game script was a big part of that.
Over those three seasons, the Pack passed at the seventh-highest rate when the game was within a touchdown. The Jets are projected for 10 wins, have a running back coming off of an ACL tear, brought in a future Hall of Fame quarterback, and play four games against the top-three scoring offenses from a season ago. I think it’s safe to say that the Jets are going to be in their fair share of close and potentially high-scoring games that result in a well-above-average pass rate.
Let’s break out the napkin for some quick math!
Last season, teams that won 10+ games averaged 35.2 pass attempts per game. So let’s use that as a starting point.
During his final season teamed with an alpha receiver, Rodgers fed Davante Adams 32.6% of the targets. Blindly assigning that level of involvement for Wilson is irresponsible given that he doesn’t have the years of reps with Rodgers that Adams had. However, he does clearly occupy the WR1 role in New York’s offense, and his potential is off the charts.
As a rookie, in an inept offense, Wilson earned 25% of the targets. So what if we split the difference and give him a 28.8% share? That’s still an ultra-impressive rate that is on par with what CeeDee Lamb got last season but is dialed back from assuming that Year 2 of Wilson is peak Adams.
That means we have 25.1 pass attempts per game left to allocate. Packers running backs averaged 6.8 targets per game last season, while the Jets’ backfield saw 7.4. This backfield has proven capable of catching the rock (much like the duo Rodgers played with last season), so let’s again split the difference: 7.1 per game.
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We are left with roughly 18 looks per game to disperse among the non-Wilson receivers and tight ends. Neither Tyler Conklin nor C.J. Uzomah has proven themselves as regular target earners, and Rodgers hasn’t been known to feature the TE position with much volume, so a replication of the six-ish targets per game that they averaged last season makes sense to carry over.
We’re down to 12 targets left per game for all of these secondary receivers. If Lazard and Hardman can separate themselves and split that number, both would be on the fringes of Flex consideration at best. But the more likely outcome is that those 12 targets are distributed more based on weekly matchups than assigned to a certain player, something that will result in a few nice volume spots for all involved but a lack of consistency across the board.
Should Fantasy Managers Draft Hardman Jr. at His ADP?
At the end of the day, you’re spending your last pick on an athletic receiver in a Rodgers-led offense. You could do worse.
Hardman does have some upside if he can win this WR2 role outright, I’m just not optimistic that happens. In the final stages of a draft, he’s a fine pick, but in Hail Mary mode, I find myself trending toward a former Rodgers target turned Chief in Marquez Valdes-Scantling over this former Chief turned Rodgers target or throwing a dart on the other New York team with Darius Slayton.
