The Kansas City Chiefs‘ Rashee Rice broke out over the second half of last season, emerging as Patrick Mahomes’ top wide receiver. Entering his sophomore season, Rice is only going to get better, but he now faces a significant increase in target competition.
What does Rice’s fantasy football projection look like?
Rashee Rice’s 2024 Fantasy Outlook
- Fantasy points per game: 15.0 ppg
- Receptions: 94
- Receiving Yards: 1,115
- Receiving TDs: 8.3
These are PFN’s consensus projections, correct as of August 14. The most up-to-date projections can be found in our Who Should I Draft Tool.
Should You Draft Rice This Year?
Unsurprisingly, Rice was one of the most difficult players to project this season. The easiest players to project are the ones whose situations haven’t changed much. With Rice, this year is a whole lot different than last.
Let’s start with the most pertinent question: How many games will Rice play? In crafting projections, I always operate under the assumption everyone will play 17 games. We know players will miss games, but we don’t know who or how many. It’s easiest to compare player performance that way.
The lone exception is when we know for sure that a player is going to miss games. In the case of guys like Nick Chubb and T.J. Hockenson, we know they won’t be ready in Week 1. For Rice, we know a suspension is coming, but we have no idea when. As we saw with Alvin Kamara two years ago, it may very well not even happen this season.
The PFN consensus projections are currently assuming no suspension. Rice’s 15.0 fantasy points per game would put him in high WR2 territory, more in line what he did after becoming a starter last season. From Weeks 12-17, Rice averaged 18.47 fantasy points per game. Those are mid-WR1 numbers.
It’s easy to see how Rice regresses, though. For starters, he’s a player who is tremendously reliant on yards after the catch. Rice was second to only Deebo Samuel (8.8) in yards after the catch per reception at 8.3. His 4.8 aDOT (average depth of target) was 99th in the league. Nearly 70% of his 938 receiving yards came after the catch. Rice was also targeted on 27.4% of his routes run, 12th in the league.
While a lot of Rice’s metrics support the notion he’s a good receiver, the Chiefs also had no one else for Mahomes to throw to. They’ve since added Xavier Worthy and Hollywood Brown, both of whom will command targets at a much higher rate than the sub-replacement-level players the team was deploying last season.
On the other hand, the Chiefs were pretty bad offensively last season. They scored just 37 offensive touchdowns. I’m expecting a massive bounce-back season from Mahomes, something like 5,000 yards and 40 touchdowns to be exact. If we get that sort of year from Mahomes, everyone is going to eat.
Rice’s ADP sits at WR36, but that’s only because the fantasy community is expecting a suspension to open the season. If that doesn’t materialize, Rice’s ADP is going to skyrocket.
Given the lack of news as of mid-August, I am becoming more and more confident Rice’s situation will be more like Kamara’s with the suspension coming in the 2025 season. Accordingly, I’ve adjusted his projections upward and have him catching 102 balls for 1,180 yards and 6.8 touchdowns, averaging out to 15.38 ppg.
We will see where Rice’s price ends up by the time we all draft. If it doesn’t fully correct, I am all in on Rice this season.
