Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill has a checkered past.
Whether it was domestic assault when he was in college or child abuse allegations last offseason, Hill entered the 2019 NFL campaign with a couple of ugly incidents in his rearview mirror.
But with the Chiefs getting set to battle the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl on Sunday, owner Clark Hunt says he has noticed a whole lot of growth from Hill this season:
Article Continues Below“We never had any issues with him,” Hunt said, according to Adam Teicher of ESPN.com. “He always was where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to be doing, accountable to the team, listening to his coaches, [being] a good teammate. I think we’ve seen that grow the last three or four years. Certainly I sense a heightened level of maturity from him this year, which is probably a byproduct of the challenges he went through earlier this year.”
Kansas City rewarded Hill with a three-year, $54 million contract extension before the season began, a move that was met with some backlash given the wide out's track record.
But Hunt says that the Chiefs knew the type of man Hill was when they locked him up long term:
“Part of it was our experience with him over the four years he had been with us,” Hunt said Tuesday. “We knew him as an individual. We clearly wanted as much information as possible from the legal proceedings that were going on. We wanted to make sure he was in a good place emotionally and that there weren't going to be any more surprises down the road.”
Injuries limited Tyreek Hill to 12 games during the regular season, but when he was on the field, he was brilliant, catching 58 passes for 860 yards and seven touchdowns. His regular-season success has also carried over into the playoffs, as he logged a couple of touchdown grabs in the Chiefs' AFC Championship Game win over the Tennessee Titans.