(CBS Sports Radio) Kansas City Chiefs star Tyreek Hill denied child abuse allegations in a letter his lawyer sent to the NFL on Thursday stating Hill never has punched his son in the chest or elsewhere on his body.
The Chiefs indefinitely suspended the wide receiver on April 26 following the leak of an audio recording of a conversation between Hill and his fiancée about the investigation into their 3-year-old son's broken arm.
"I do think it's going to be really hard for him to be accepted back by the full fan base -- and even by the organization," Chiefs Digest writer Matt Derrick said on "Ferrall on the Bench" on Thursday night. "Even though there's still this he-said, she-said element to it and the story is so confusing and there's no clear narrative from anyone, the reality is there's a history here. Tyreek Hill had to walk the straight and narrow. The deal was that he had to be on his q's coming to Kansas City, and any slip-up was probably going to cost him. I think it's going to be really hard for him to come back into that organization with everything that's happened over the last few weeks."
The Chiefs haven't said much on the matter since suspending Hill.
"The whole organization has been really tight-lipped on it," Derrick said. "They're sticking to the party line, which is, 'Yes, the audio tape that we heard was ugly and it was disturbing, but we're going to let the process play out. We'll make the decision at the right time.'"
Many NFL insiders believe Hill could be out of the league - or worse. If Hill misses part or all of 2019, how will the Chiefs replace him?
"Mecole Hardman, the rookie, can he stretch the field a little bit? Yeah, he looks like the guy who could do that, maybe run some of the jet sweeps that they use so effectively, reverses out of the backfield, you could probably replace that," Derrick said. "But some of the savviness of Hill, you just don't have it. You're hoping that Sammy Watkins is healthy and he takes up some of that load. You've got Travis Kelce, who's coming off offseason ankle surgery. They think he'll be 100 percent. But Kelce at this point is really the key to the offense. It's going to have to go through him. He's going to be the one that's going to have to try to open up holes."