A HARDY SELL
Troubled pass rusher may have difficulty finding a new team
If you’re wondering whether Greg Hardy has played his last down in the NFL, keep an eye on the calendar.
The talented defensive end — and well-chronicled domestic abuser — still might be toxic to teams in the league, but it is only late June.
June, as in the rare down time in the NFL’s schedule — when coaches and executives are on vacation and not having to worry if one of the league’s best pass rushers could mean making the playoffs and getting the fans off their back.
That is why few NFL observers would be surprised if Hardy — as execrable as his off-field behavior has been — is back in the league at some point in 2016, and maybe sooner than later if a prominent pass rusher suffers a major injury in the preseason.
“You know what people always say: There are some teams in this league that would sign Charles Manson if they thought he could help them win a Super Bowl,” a longtime former personnel executive said recently.
Those close to Hardy claim t he 27- year- old Mississippi product is closer to an NFL return than recent national media reports would have you believe.
Agent Drew Rosenhaus declined comment, but a Hardy confidant told The Post last week that “a handful of teams” remain in contact with t he former Panthers star.
“We’re still hopeful Greg will get signed before” NFL training camps open at the end of July, the confidant added.
The teams mentioned most often as potential Hardy landing spots are the Falcons, Eagles, Lions and Raiders, though Oakland already has one notorious off-field troublemaker on hand in Aldon Smith.
Unfortunately for Hardy, the strong sense of trepidation among teams doesn’t stem solely from his ugly 2014 domestic-violence incident with an ex-girlfriend in Charlotte, N.C.
That event became even more infamous when Deadspin published police photos last November of the physical damage Hardy inflicted on girlfriend Nicole Holder, which she said included throwing her on a sofa covered in assault rifles and choking her.
The charges against Hardy eventually were dropped after Holder reportedly reached a settlement with him and refused to testify, but the NFL suspended Hardy for 10 games, which was reduced to four on appeal.
Teams instead now appear to wonder privately if Hardy’s football talent still is at a level worth the inevitable PR blowback from signing him.
That didn’t seem to be the case last season, when Hardy managed just six sacks in 12 games with the Cowboys and caused so much havoc in the locker room that even Jerry Jones — the NFL’s resident Father Flanagan when it comes to head cases now that Al Davis is gone — nixed bringing him back.
That on- f ield performance was a far cry from Hardy’s glory days with the Panthers, when he lived up to his “Kraken” nickname by totaling a combined 26 sacks in 2012 and 2013.
Club off i cials around the l eague also still talk about Hardy’s sideline meltdown at MetLife Stadium last October. He got into a physical altercation with special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia and wideout Dez Bryant, who was in street clothes on the sideline with a foot/ankle injury at the time, after the Cowboys had given up a 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown by the Giants’ Dwayne Harris.
Hardy — or, at least, Rosenhaus and the rest of his management team — have gotten the message.
Hardy has spent the past six months on a media campaign to rehabilitate his image, and Rosenhaus sent word to teams that his client has undergone at least 24 therapy sessions this offseason to address his behavior. Hardy also cleaned up (and toned down) his social-media pages recently.
The public and media haven’t bought into it — Hardy’s sitdown interview with ESPN was universally panned — and one personnel executive later mocked Rosenhaus’ effort to ESPN.
“This smacks of a guy who is on death row in prison and vows that he’s found God,’’ the personnel director told the network.
But Hardy isn’t as unpopular with his fellow players as his image suggests. Several Panthers told The Post at the Super Bowl this year that they didn’t agree with owner Jerry Richardson’s decision last year to let Hardy depart in free agency.
“That was an upstairs decision that we didn’t have any control over,” veteran Carolina defensive end Charles Johnson t old The Post at the Super B ow l . “We ’ve still go t Greg in our hearts, because he’s a brother of our [ defensive] line.
“It’s like he’s been with us [in spirit during this season],” Johnson added. “He is always going to be a brother and always be a friend
of ours.”