Is Greg Hardy Finally Too Toxic for the NFL?

NFL free agency is just about wrapped up, at least for the real difference-makers. A grand total of six of the 75 best free agents on Pro Football Talk's "Hot 100" are still not spoken for.

For most of those players, the lack of interest stems from ordinary football factors: Ryan Fitzpatrick and the Jets are locked in a contract dispute where he has no other options. Reggie Nelson is a 32-year-old safety in a league that thinks that's two years too old. Mike Neal's last two years with Green Bay have been disappointing. And so on.

With former Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy, the fall from grace follows an unusual trajectory. In a league desperate for edge rushers, a talented one like Hardy has been sitting on the market for weeks. This is not simply the aftermath of his arrest and trial for assaulting his ex-girlfriend in 2014, and the NFL investigation that followed—after all, those weren't enough to dissuade the Cowboys from giving him a one-year deal at essentially a franchise-tag level salary last season.

But Hardy was such a head case in Dallas—demonstrating a continued lack of self-awareness in a series of mind-boggling incidents—that nobody has touched him this offseason. Even the Cowboys, of all teams, don't want to deal with him. Some writers believed that bringing him back would have been equal to neutering head coach Jason Garrett. Google News searches for Hardy are littered with "this team could be a fit" suppositions and "this team won't be a fit" statements from head coaches.

Which, I want to tell you all, is kind of amazing. We have a culture that is good about getting outraged about things, but that outrage doesn't often bleed into real-world decisions. While Hardy's on-field performance is reason No. 1 NFL teams find him unemployable, the very real threat of public backlash is a contributing factor at this point.

Hardy wouldn't be the first NFL player to become a pariah thanks to his off-field behavior, but I am curious if the NFL will be able to leave him unemployed the way it has with Ray Rice. When Rice was arrested for assaulting his fiancé in 2014, he was a 27-year-old running back coming off a bad season. (Hardy, on the other hand, was coming off back-to-back seasons with 11-plus sacks for the Carolina Panthers when he was arrested.)

Rice was being shortchanged by his stats on a pure talent evaluation, because he tried to play heavier in 2013 and it backfired. Players like that without existing contracts often have to settle for being camp invites or snagging one-year deals from teams in May—there's no shortage of NFL-quality running backs who can catch a ball on the streets. But even if Rice was a better bet than most, what he offered on the field couldn't make up for the millions of people having watched him punch Janay Palmer in that Revel Casino elevator.

I think Hardy is even more toxic an association for an NFL organization than Rice would have been. At the same time, he has an ability that just isn't readily available in the league. Hardy had a relatively down year in 2015—after serving his four-game suspension, he had just six sacks for the season—but his skill set is in high demand, and he's still just 28 years old. Dwight Freeney is getting snaps at 35 because pass-rushing skill trumps all in this league. The Broncos just won a Super Bowl on that formula.

What that means when you throw it all into the NFL decision-making black box, I'm not sure. I wouldn't be surprised if commissioner Roger Goodell privately discouraged or even forbid teams from signing Hardy. But if Hardy is a truly free agent, I've got to think someone will take a chance on him. It only takes one arrogant organization thinking that they can reel in some of his poor behavior for Hardy's career to still have a pulse. That tells you everything you need to know about how much the NFL values getting after the quarterback.