AP

The Panthers paid Greg Hardy 13.1 million for one game this season.

He’s telling people he’d come back for much less than that.

Via David Newton of ESPN.com, Hardy left a message for his teammates on the whiteboard in the locker room, and told several of them he’d love to return.

“His heart is in Carolina,” cornerback Josh Norman said. “I had a talk with him. He wants to be here. He don’t want to go nowhere else. He wants to be in Carolina. He even told me he would play for free. That’s what he told me verbatim out of his mouth.”

That’s unlikely, for any reason.

Such that the words that fall out of his mouth matter, Hardy’s not doing anything for free, and he isn’t free to do anything yet. His Feb. 9 court date on domestic violence charges looms, and will be an important factor in his free agency.

But his next destination will likely be elsewhere anyway.

The Panthers weren’t looking to sign Hardy to a long-term deal before his arrest, and after paying him to sit on the commissioner’s exempt list, they’re not any more interested now.

At any price, probably.