Sports

Rashee Rice's Legal Issues Could Blunt His 2026 Season. How Can the Chiefs Get Past It All?

By Doug Farrar Athlon Sports

The Kansas City Chiefs selected SMU receiver Rashee Rice with the 56th overall pick in the second round of the 2023 draft, hoping that he could become a major part of Andy Reid's passing game. It seemed to work in Rice's rookie season, when he caught 105 passes on 130 targets for 1,200 yards and eight touchdowns.

From then, however, things have been much more complicated. Knee and hamstring issues limited Rice to just four games in 2024, and he was suspended for the first six games of the 2025 season due to multiple criminal issues. He played eight games in total, as he was also placed on injured reserve on December 24 due to multiple concussions.

Now, Rice has been sentenced to 30 days in a Dallas County jail after violating his probation by testing positive for THC. That will take him out of the Chiefs' offseason activities, and though he should be ready for training camp, there's not much to go on when it comes to Rice's reliability.

Also, per ESPN's Adam Schefter, Rice underwent a knee procedure last week in relation to a 2024 injury, and jail isn't exactly the best place to recover from that... or anything else.

And with that, the Chiefs could be in trouble, because their receiver room without Rice is problematic at best. 2025 first-round pick Xavier Worthy is a speed receiver who's still getting the hang of the nuances of the position. The same could be said of veteran Tyquan Thornton, another on-field burner who has never caught more than 22 passes in any of his four NFL seasons.

The Chiefs must have assumed that Rice would be a major part of their plans in 2026, because they went heavy on defense at the top of their draft, and didn't take a receiver until Cincinnati's Cyrus Allen with the 176th overall pick in the fifth round.

They also signed Jeff Caldwell, Allen's Cincinnati teammate, as an undrafted free agent. Allen is one of the best route-runners in this class, and Caldwell is another size/speed guy who needs to work on the nuances of the position, which leaves the Chiefs in an unenviable spot when it comes to Patrick Mahomes' targets.

"He's a tough dude," Reid said of Rice last December. "A young guy with a lot on his plate, and he's powering through it to the best of his ability right now, and that's how he's going about his business. He comes to work and works. And it's unfortunate that he's had a couple of these drops. It's not for a lack of effort or focus that way, but to say he doesn't have a lot of things going... he has a lot of things going."

The drops refer to the six drops Rice had last season on his 77 targets last season, of which he caught 53 passes for 571 yards and five touchdowns. So, even if Rice is ready for the regular season, and can get past all the things he has going... well, there's no guarantee that he'll be able to return to the form he showed in his rookie season.

Which means that Reid and his coaches will need to assemble a No. 1 receiver out of whole cloth in the upcoming season. Perhaps they could sign a veteran free-agent target like Stefon Diggs, Deebo Samuel, DeAndre Hopkins, or Keenan Allen, but there are reasons that veterans are available this late in the process. Or, perhaps the Chiefs could get in on the post-June 1 A.J. Brown trade action. Beyond that, it could be a frustrating season for Mahomes and the team, as they once again attempt to give their all-time quarterback the targets he needs with not enough in the pantry.

Stranger things have happened, but right now, it's a tough row to hoe.

Copyright 2026 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This story was originally published May 19, 2026 at 5:24 PM.

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