The injured marred tenure of 2021 first-round draft choice Kadarius Toney with the New York Giants ended on Thursday, and the former Blount High School quarterback seemed happy about it.
After the Giants traded Toney to the Kansas City Chiefs, he tweeted: “Chiefs Kingdom, baby. Thank you, God.”
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Toney played 35 offensive snaps with two receptions for zero yards and two rushing attempts for 23 yards in New York’s first two games this season.
Toney has missed the past five games because of a hamstring injury. He hasn’t practiced since Oct. 5, when he was listed as a limited participant.
The Giants used the 20th selection in the 2021 NFL Draft on the Florida wide receiver, then got 39 receptions for 420 yards and 6 yards on three rushing attempts from Toney in his rookie season.
Toney missed seven games.
But among the 10 games in which Toney did play, he broke Odell Beckham’s franchise rookie record with 189 receiving yards in a 44-20 loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Oct. 10, even though he was ejected from the contest for punching defensive back Damontae Kazee in the helmet with 5:52 to play.
Toney became the fifth player in the Super Bowl Era with a game of at least 189 receiving yards within the first five contests of his career, joining the Atlanta Falcons’ Ken Burrow in 1971, Buffalo Bills’ Jerry Butler in 1979, Minnesota Vikings’ Randy Moss in 1998 and Arizona Cardinals’ Anquan Boldin in 2003.
As in 2021, when Toney started training camp on reserve/COVID-19, missed most of the preseason practices because of a hamstring injury and did not play in any of New York’s preseason games, the wide receiver was a sporadic training-camp participant and did not play in any preseason games in 2022.
Toney was an All-State quarterback at Blount High School in Prichard, and he won the Alabama Sports Writers Association’s Class 6A Back of the Year Award for the 2016 season, a year after he led the Leopards to a school-record 511 points. In his final two seasons at Blount, Toney threw for 6,498 yards and 69 touchdowns and ran for 1,790 yards and 31 touchdowns. He made the conversion to wide receiver at Florida.
ESPN reported the Chiefs traded third- and sixth-round selections in the 2023 NFL Draft to obtain Toney.
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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.
