4 Players With GA Ties To Take The Field In 2021 Super Bowl

TAMPA, FL — When Super Bowl LV kicks off Sunday on CBS, Georgia will be well represented. This year, it’s the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and both teams have their share of hometown heroes.

Each year this football extravaganza crowns a new NFL champion amid media hype, glamour and tremendous fanfare. Most importantly, the game will feature some of the best athletes in the game.

So if their name is on the roster when they step on the field, these players are a part of history and considered — at least for one Sunday out of their career — one of the best in the business.

Georgia will get to see four players suit up Sunday. Look for Harrison Butker and Mecole Hardman Jr. of the Chiefs, and Andrew Adams and Kevin Minter of the Buccaneers.

Butker is a kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, and he went to both high school and college in Georgia. His athletic abilities stretch back to his high school days playing football — as well as soccer, basketball and the tuba — at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, where he graduated in 2013, and into his college football career at Georgia Tech, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Chiefs kicker now lives in Kansas City, Missouri with his wife Isabelle and their two children — but his rise to the Super Bowl was not a given, Butker's father, also named Harrison, told the AJC. He graduated college with "pretty average" statistics, Butker's father said, but has quickly worked his way in the "top echelon" of kickers in the NFL, according to legendary Atlanta Falcons former kicker Morten Andersen.

Butker first signed with the Carolina Panthers in May 2017, but never played a game for the team. He was waived from his contract on Sept. 13, 2017 — about four months after the Panthers signed him in May — and the Chiefs picked him up 13 days later on Sept. 26, 2017.

“Overall, he’s – in my mind – in the top echelon of kickers in the NFL,” Andersen, one of only two pure kickers in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, told the AJC.

Hardman Jr. also grew up in Georgia. Born Carey Mecole Hardman Jr., the Chiefs wide receiver was born and raised in Bowman, and played football at Elbert County High School. There, he carried on the legacy of his father, Mecole Sr., and uncle Kendrell, who also played high school football for the Blue Devils, according to The Red & Black, the University of Georgia's independent student newspaper. The name "Hardman" bears local celebrity status in Elbert County, the newspaper said.

Hardman Jr. went on to play college football at UGA until his graduation in 2018, and still comes back to visit Georgia "every chance he gets," his dad told the university newspaper. He even makes a point to stop by his high school alma mater when he visits his hometown, said Brian Turner, Elbert County High School assistant principal, to The Red & Black.

“[I] definitely just want to make that last name look good because that’s a brand,” Hardman Jr. told The Red & Black. “Just got to keep continuing to represent it the right way.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Adams — an Atlanta native who graduated high school from Woodward Academy in 2011 — played college football for the University of Connecticut, where he graduated in 2015. Adams was first signed by the New York Giants in 2016 as an undrafted free agent, and eventually made the active roster later the same year. However, the Giants waived Adams in September 2018, when the Buccaneers picked him up — but only briefly.

Adams signed a one-year contract with the Detroit Lions in March 2019. But after being released during final roster cuts just five months later, the Buccaneers re-signed Adams in September 2019, where he plays as a safety.

Adams' teammate Kevin Minter grew up on the northeast side of Metro Atlanta, born and raised in Gwinnett County. The Bucs linebacker attended Berkmar High School in Lilburn for his freshman and sophomore years, but finished his final two years and graduated from Peachtree Ridge High School in Suwanee. He started on both football teams all four years, eventually moving on to play college football at Louisiana State University until he graduated in 2012.

Minter started his professional football career with the Arizona Cardinals from 2013 until 2016, followed by brief stints with the Cincinnati Bengals and New York Jets from March 2017 to August 2018. He signed with the Bucs on Oct. 23, 2018— was released eight days later — and then re-signed with the Bucs again on Nov. 13, 2018.

While Minter doesn't live in Georgia anymore, he opened and still co-owns multiple Joint Chiropractic franchises in Georgia, starting with the Duluth and Peachtree Corners locations near his hometown, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.

“Being a pro athlete, I get (chiropractic care) twice a week,” Minter told the Gwinnett Daily Post. “It has to happen. You’ve got to be aligned right to hit these 300-pound guys every weekend."

The Chiefs will be making their fourth-ever Super Bowl appearance. Tampa Bay will be making its second Super Bowl appearance in franchise history, and their first since they won in 2003. Tampa Bay will be the first Super Bowl team to play in a Super Bowl at its home stadium.

Super Bowl LV will be played on Sunday, with kickoff slated for 6:30 p.m. ET. The game will be broadcasted on CBS.

Patch Editor Kathleen Sturgeon contributed.