RADIO
We’re just under 48 hours removed from the knee injury of Kansas City Chiefs wideout Rashee Rice, and while we have yet to receive the official diagnosis, we know that Rice is expected to miss an extended amount of time. With that in mind, what should we do with the rest of the Chiefs’ offense? Kansas City has scored 30 or more points just three times in their last 25 games, and they’re a far cry from the offensive juggernaut they were during quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ first few seasons.
The gameplan for the Chiefs over the last two years has been about dominating the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball, taking care of the football and taking advantage of mistakes made by their opponents. With Rice and Isiah Pacheco out, their margin for error is getting smaller and smaller, and Mahomes is only able to cover up so much of that with fewer and fewer resources at his disposal.
Mahomes has been able to sustain lesser receivers in the past, and he still has tight end Travis Kelce, although he is a diminished version of the player he was a few years ago. What are we going to do with this Kansas City offense for the foreseeable future? Are there any wide receivers worth rostering in fantasy, or should we be fading the unit altogether? That’s what we’re here to determine today.
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Receivers
The receiver room has been quite consistent through four weeks, and I think the changes that will be made are relatively easy to figure out. Wideouts Xavier Worthy and Justin Watson had been the team’s second and third wideouts in three-receiver sets, and they’ll maintain their position in the pecking order.
However, the other name to watch is JuJu Smith-Schuster, who has seen his snap rate increase significantly over the last two weeks.
After playing just 25 snaps combined in Weeks 1 & 2, JuJu has played a combined 73 snaps over the last weeks. While Watson and Worthy fill more of the downfield and gadget type of roles, JuJu is the receiver on the roster that best fits the mold that Rice was playing previously.
He doesn’t have the same speed and athleticism, but he does his best work in the short to intermediate areas of the field where Rice worked.
If the Chiefs don’t go out in the trade market to add another wideout, I think JuJu actually has a lot of upside if he’s able to stay healthy. In his previous stint with the Chiefs, Smith-Schuster finished second on the team in targets, receptions, and yards by a fair margin.
Worthy is a better wideout than the other options that were in KC at the time, but JuJu still has some life to him. At worst, he’s a flex option, but he has legitimate WR2 upside in Rice’s absence.
Kelce
One of the major reasons for the Chiefs’ early offensive struggles has been the diminished version of Kelce that we have seen through four weeks. His 23.4 fantasy points in half-PPR scoring through four weeks are the lowest he’s had since Mahomes took over at quarterback in 2018, and the only season that is close is last year when he had 36 despite missing the first game of the year.
Now, while the Chiefs likely wanted to preserve him as much as possible for later in the year, they can’t afford to do that now.
I’m not expecting Kelce to magically vault back into the unique atmosphere that only he operated in over the last several years with the injury to Rice, but I do think that his value should increase dramatically over the next few weeks.
Kelce is still firmly outsnapping his fellow tight ends, and despite his dip in production, he’s still miles ahead of his teammates. He’s second on the team in targets, receptions, and yards, and he’s coming off his best game of the season, which coincidentally came with Rice sidelined early on.
Entering Week 4, Kelce had eight catches for 69 yards on 12 targets. In Week 4, he caught seven of his nine targets for 89 yards. Despite many experts expecting this to be the fantasy season for tight ends in a long time, we’re off to a terrible start with just one tight end over 40 points through four weeks, and TE2 this year would have been TE7 through this point last season.
Kelce is going to see his volume increase, and his volume is going to carry him up the tight end rankings above players with less-consistent situations.
RBs
The Chiefs were heading into the season with a plan similar to last year’s recipe that ultimately led them to their second straight Super Bowl victory. They wanted to take care of the ball through the air while playing stout defense, and they wanted to grind out wins with running back Isiah Pacheco playing through one of the best offensive lines in football.
Rice is out, and Pacheco is gone for at least the next several weeks. Kareem Hunt was brought in to provide depth to the shallow running back room, and it appears he has already surpassed rookie Carson Steele in the running back rotation.
In Week 3, Steele dominated the running back touches with 62 percent of the snaps. He finished with 18 of the 27 running back touches, and Samaje Perine got the majority of the receiving work. Less than one week later, things have rapidly shifted away from Steele.
He was third in running back snaps with 11, and after fumbling on one of his three touches, he was sent relegated to the bench in favor of the two veterans.
After just one week to get back up to speed, Hunt dominated the workload on the ground and in the air with 16 of the 24 running back touches, although he got just one carry in the red zone while Perine came away with a touchdown.
It’s rare for teams to rely too heavily on a single running back rather than split up the work. With the way the early season has gone for KC, I would expect them to turn this into a committee of some sort, but Hunt is clearly the running back to own as long as he’s healthy.
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