After the Chiefs selected wide receiver Tyreek Hill in the fifth round of the draft, the team defended choosing a player who pleaded guilty to punching and choking his pregnant girlfriend in 2014.
Chiefs coach Andy Reid said the team was confident that Hill is “trying to do better” and that the team has a support system in place to help him. That wasn’t enough to temper a negative reaction from some corners of their fanbase, something that Hill said this weekend is justified while trying to reassure those fans that he will stay out of trouble in the future.
“Those guys, those fans, they have every right to be mad at me because I did something wrong and I just let my emotions get the best of me and I shouldn’t have done it,” Hill said in comments distributed by the team. “They have every right to be mad. But guess what, I’m going to come back and be a better man, be a better citizen and everything will just take care of itself and let God do the rest.”
Reid said Saturday that he didn’t think that it would be a wasted draft pick if Hill failed to make the team, although it is hard to imagine the Chiefs drafted a player with Hill’s baggage unless they were fairly convinced that he can improve their on-field product. That would be the case with most draft picks, of course, but being wrong about Hill would be a bigger hit to the Chiefs than cutting a fifth-round pick whose selection didn’t require lengthy explanations.