Fantasy football season is just around the corner, which means it’s time to start assembling pre-draft rankings and evaluating some of the league’s most interesting situations. The Kansas City Chiefs made significant investments in their wide receiver group this offseason, signing Marquise “Hollywood” Brown in free agency and drafting Texas speedster Xavier Worthy in the first round of the NFL Draft. With second-year receiver Rashee Rice likely to be suspended for part of the year, KC’s wide receiver group is full of unknowns.
Ranking his top 80 fantasy football wide receivers on SI.com, Michael Fabiano has three Chiefs in his top 50 but none in his top 30 — a fitting range for the Chiefs’ to-be-determined wide receiver rotation.
Fabiano has Brown at No. 37, Rice at No. 40, and Worthy at No. 49. KC’s top three wide receivers are all bundled extremely closely together, with no clear-cut No. 1 option and potentially volatile floors and ceilings for the entire trio.
Fabiano wrote about Worthy specifically, noting that his average draft position (ADP) makes him one of the “biggest risks by ADP,” with Fabiano ranking him as WR48 while Worthy is currently being drafted as WR36:
“Worthy is a speedy, exciting player who could be a great fit in Kansas City, but he’s not Tyreek Hill,” Fabiano writes. “In fact, he might not be better than the fourth option in the passing game for Patrick Mahomes behind Travis Kelce, Rashee Rice and Marquise Brown. Thus, I have him ranked much lower.”
The most interesting part of Fabiano’s rankings isn’t the order of KC’s WRs — it’s the clustering. With Rice seeming likely to miss somewhere between four to eight games (with a chance to be gone for double-digits), last year’s eventual WR1 could be stuck on your bench for the majority of the fantasy regular season. Brown is entering a new offense and Worthy is entering the league, adding even more complicating factors.
Ultimately, even though this will almost certainly evolve throughout training camp, I would be inclined to pass on Rice, wait on Worthy, and strike while the iron is hot on Brown. The suspension gamble is a dangerous one for Rice, and even though I do think Worthy will be a legitimate weapon in the Chiefs’ offense in Year 1, I’m not sure he’ll even out-snap Justin Watson early in the year, given how the Chiefs often favor the known-quantity veteran in Andy Reid’s complex offense.
That leaves me a bit lower on Rice and Worthy in 2024 than some, but somebody has to catch passes from Patrick Mahomes! That’s where Brown comes in.
Without Rice, Brown clearly projects as KC’s WR1 early in the year, almost by necessity. His entrance into Reid’s offense should be a bit easier than Worthy’s on account of Brown’s NFL experience and track record, and the Chiefs are surely operating as if they know they’ll need Brown to take on a major workload starting immediately. Even when Rice returns and as Worthy becomes more comfortable in the offense, any rapport Brown has built with Mahomes will continue through the rest of the season, and I expect Brown to be KC’s No. 1 wide receiver in 2024.