Will Hollywood Brown Play Week 1? Latest News and Injury Update for the Chiefs’ WR

The injury bug has hit Hollywood Brown once again, and it may cost the Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver the season opener on Thursday night.

So what is the injury, and how does it impact Brown’s status for Week 1? Let’s take a look

Marquise Brown Injury Update

Brown suffered a shoulder injury, or more specifically, a sternoclavicular injury, in the Chiefs’ preseason opener.

He has been out since then, and on Friday, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid announced that Brown would miss the Week 1 matchup against the Baltimore Ravens.

It is a disappointing injury for Brown and the Chiefs, who made some offseason moves to upgrade their passing game. Among them was acquiring Brown, who had spent the previous two seasons with the Arizona Cardinals.

The good news is that, according to Reid, Brown has been recovering well and quickly, leading many to believe that his absence from regular-season games will be short.

Brown’s Fantasy Outlook for Week 1

As mentioned, the Chiefs notably added to their passing attack this offseason by signing Brown and using a first-round pick on Xavier Worthy in last April’s NFL Draft.

Kansas City’s passing attack, along with quarterback Patrick Mahomes, already featured emerging star Rashee Rice at wide receiver and future Hall of Fame tight end Travis Kelce, but needed more firepower.

Brown was coming off a disappointing 2023 season with the Arizona Cardinals. In 14 games last season, he had 51 receptions for 574 yards and four touchdowns.

Brown had a terrible time catching the ball last season. In fact, among 42 players who were targeted at least 100 times last season, Brown’s 50.5% catch percentage was easily the lowest in the NFL. Not surprisingly, it was also the lowest mark of his five-year career.

Brown finished last season averaging fewer than 10 fantasy points a game (9.6), ranking outside the top 50 in that category in 2023. That, too, was a career-low and a significant decline from just three seasons ago (2021), when he averaged a career-high 14.1 fantasy PPG.

With Brown all but certain to miss Week 1, fantasy managers, who probably shouldn’t have taken Brown until the later rounds anyway, can at least be comforted by the fact that his production — or lack thereof — should not be difficult to replace.

From the Chiefs’ perspective, there are still plenty of weapons on offense to seemingly make up for Brown’s absence. Along with that, a matchup against the league’s No. 1 defense last season in the Ravens wasn’t exactly good news for a player like Brown, who is coming off a miserable season.

So while Brown’s absence may cause fantasy managers to scramble around a bit for Week 1 production, finding a replacement for his numbers should not exactly be similar to finding a needle in a haystack.