Fantasy Court: The Case AGAINST Rashee Rice in 2026 (Fantasy Football)
This article is part of the annual Fantasy Court series. Don’t forget to check out “The Case FOR Rashee Rice” for the opposing view.
Opening Statement
Your Honor and esteemed peers of the judiciary. I stand before you today to lay out the case against a man who needs no introduction to a courtroom…Kansas City Chiefs WR Rashee Marquin Rice. Thankfully for all involved, the Fantasy Footballers Fantasy Court is not a court of law, but it is no less important, particularly as we begin to navigate the pre-season schedule and enter the peak of fantasy draft season. Unlike the Twitter handle of esteemed NFL Insider Mr. Rapoport, this is one Rap Sheet that fantasy managers do not want to be perusing this August. Strap yourselves in; this may get a little bumpy.
Availability is Your Best Ability
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, of the vast array of charges laid out against the defendant here today, I start with what should be considered the most heinous and serious crime a supposed WR1 can commit…no, not playing for the Miami Dolphins, but simply if you are not on the field, you are not scoring fantasy points.
After a relatively successful rookie season in 2023, which saw the former SMU Mustang finish as the WR27 for fantasy, the overall 55th(!) pick of that year’s NFL Draft has not quite lived up to the expectations his early-career form in KC hinted at. To his credit, Rice did start his sophomore campaign like a man possessed, posting back-to-back-back top-20 finishes in the opening three weeks, hauling in 12 grabs for 110 yards and a TD in the Chiefs’ 22-17 win over Atlanta…his best fantasy performance to date at that time. Unfortunately for Rice and his fantasy managers, that is where the story of his 2024 campaign ended, with the overall WR4 though those opening three games suffering a brutal LCL and PCL injury against the Chargers in week four that would see him miss the remainder of the year.
Injuries are unfortunate, and much like the concussion that saw the defendant miss the final two games of last season, these things happen…but with news of an off-season knee-scope procedure surfacing in late May, is the now 26-year-old in danger of drawing the dreaded “injury-prone” tag?
Speaking of tags…we simply cannot ignore the other reason why the Chiefs’ number-one receiver hasn’t exactly been an ever-present on the field of play over the last couple of seasons. Now, let’s get one thing straight I am #NotALawyer so I will not be diving too deep into Mr. Rice’s off-field issues, but what we can say is that throughout his first three years as a player in the National Football League, Rashee has not exactly had to go out of his way to find trouble, and in reality, it tends to find him, really easily. A number of incidents since 2024 led to the then-injured WR spending 30 days in a Dallas County jail this summer.
While his teammates were participating in OTA’s, going through mandatory mini camp, and presumably preparing for Travis Kelce’s wedding, Rice was rehabbing that knee procedure I mentioned earlier behind bars in northeast Texas. Having served a six-game suspension at the start of last season for his part in a 2024 automotive incident, the whispers in the bushes suggest that Rice will face no further action for this latest misdemeanor, but this is yet to be confirmed by the Commissioner. With the defendant once again bringing the reputation of the shield into disrepute, one cannot help but feel the Sword of Damocles dangles perilously over the head of KC’s No.4.
Michael Owens/Getty Images
The (P)Rice is Wrong Bob
We have all heard the late, great Mr. Barker explain the rules a thousand times; try to get as close to the correct price as possible without going over…and boy are people willing to spend the big bucks on Rashee. For the most part, it appears that the fantasy community is taking the rumors of Rice facing no further action from Mr. Goodell as gospel truth, and that trust is most certainly being baked into his ADP. At the time of writing, Rice is being drafted as the overall WR11 in the earlier parts of the third round on Sleeper and as the WR8 in the late second on ESPN; what are we doing here, people?
Let’s take a peeksie at the caliber of player going off draft boards around the same time as Rashee, shall we?
| Name | ADP | Positional |
| Jeremiyah Love | 3.02 | RB13 |
| George Pickens | 3.02 | WR10 |
| Kyren Williams | 3.04 | RB14 |
| Rashee Rice | 3.05 | WR11 |
| Josh Jacobs | 3.06 | RB15 |
| Malik Nabers | 3.07 | WR12 |
| Breece Hall | 3.08 | RB16 |
| Chris Olave | 3.08 | WR13 |
Right now, Rashee is sitting right in the middle of this eight-pack of NFL superstars, and what one thing do each and every one of the other seven have in common? They are all ranked higher than Rice in The Fantasy Footballers Ultimate Draft Kit…every.single.one.
Sure, each of these guys has their own miniature red flags that will raise some concerns when you are sitting on the clock in the third round of your draft;
- Jeremiyah Love got a little banged up on that all-important 13th carry against the Raiders last week in pre-season.
- George Pickens, well, he isn’t even the WR1 on his own team.
- Kyren Williams may be losing even more work to Blake Corum in the Rams backfield, according to reports.
- Josh Jacobs is currently an unwelcome addition to GroinIndex.com
- Malik Nabers may not yet be fully recovered from the ACL tear that ended his 2025 season.
- Breece Hall still plays for the Jets, last time I checked.
- And “Christian” Chris Olave always comes packaged with the risk of being one concussion away from an early retirement.
But with all that said…I would still rather roll the dice on all of these guys than potentially throw away my third or even second rounder on a WR who – for whatever reason – has never given us a full season on the field. The payoff could (and likely would) be huge, but I ain’t swinging for the fences this early in the draft, especially with the universally agreed need to go High-T in the opening rounds, coupled with the depth at the wideout position, which has viable starters on emerging offenses going as late as the back of the seventh round (hiya Parker Washington, hiya pal).
Kevin R. Wexler-NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
An Offense Pass-ed Its Prime?
Do you remember when Patrick Mahomes threw for 5,250 yards and 41 TDs back in 2022…halcyon days. Since then, however, the years have not been quite as kind to the NFL’s highest-ever paid player, with the now thirty-year-old struggling to put up numbers that in any way come close to resembling his former glories:
| Year | Yards | Ranking |
% Yearly Change
|
| 2022 | 5250 | 1st | N/A |
| 2023 | 4182 | 6th | -20.30% |
| 2024 | 3928 | 7th | -6.07% |
| 2025 | 3587 | 12th | -13.20% |
| -31.60% |
Since eclipsing the 5,000-yard mark for the second time as a pro back in 2022, Mahomes has seen a steady decline in total passing yards year-on-year, with his 2025 total of just 3,587 being almost 32% less than his career-best just three years prior. “But he lost Tyreek Hill!” I hear you say…he most certainly did, but that was before the 2022 season, with Juju Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling leading the way for the Chiefs’ WR corps, becoming the first-ever double-barreled surname WR duo to combine for over 100 receptions and 1,500 receiving yards (I may have made that up). The point being, this Chiefs team is no longer the passing powerhouse that it once was, whether by choice or not.
Mahomes is undoubtedly walking into the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, but when he is getting that gold jacket draped over his shoulders, 2025 will be a year he will look back at with regret and disdain.
- 502 Passing Attempts (second lowest since his first full season as a starter)
- Lowest number of Completions (315) and Completion % (63%) as a starter
- Lowest ever passing yardage total (3587 yards)
- Lowest ever passing touchdown total (22)
- Lowest ever QB rating across the year (89.6)
| Category | Total | Ranking |
| Passing Yards | 3947 | 16th |
| Passing TDs | 23 | 23rd |
| INTs Thrown | 12 | 13th |
| Sacks Allowed | 47 | 11th |
It is fair to say 2025 was not KC’s or Mahomes’ finest hour, and the state of the passing game exemplifies this perfectly. It goes some way of highlighting just how average (that is being kind) this aerial offense was when our defendant Mr. Rice finished the year third in receiving yards on the team – a mere 16 yards behind Hollywood Brown (the leading WR) – even with only playing half the number of games. Despite having arguably the most technically gifted QB in the league, this team had no 1,000-yard pass-catcher, with Messrs Rice, Kelce, and Brown all sharing the top row of the TD table with five apiece. Is this the new norm in KC, or are we expecting positive regression to the better times of the not-so-distant past…my money is on the former, and that is bad news for Rashee Rice’s sky-high fantasy stock.
IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Walk(er) More, Worry Less
The final piece of evidence I lay before the court is that of the brand-new, three-year, $45.04m contract of a man who has disintegrated the pants of one Mike Wright these last few months…Mr Kenneth Walker. Looking back at the long list of RBs Kansas City have deployed since the days of Jamaal Charles, only Kareem Hunt and most recently Isaiah Pacheco have given this run game any kind of consistency…until now.
This is a top-10-ranked NFL defensive unit in terms of yards allowed to opponents, and in 2025, only Denver, Minnesota, and Super Bowl Champions Seattle allowed fewer TDs. What do you get when you add a rock-solid defensive unit with an RB who led the league in forced missed tackles? A team who wants to control the game, win by slowing down the tempo and giving the ball to their home-run-hitting RB who can rip off huge chunk plays in the blink of an eye. Whilst Chiefs fans will not want to be reminded of the 2025 season, their 6-11 third-place finish in the AFC West presents them with a very favorable schedule in 2026 – favored in 11 of their 17 matchups.
Of course, the team will have to pass the ball at some point, and a cursory glance at the KC receiving room would suggest that Rice will immediately ascend to the tippy-top of the depth chart and see a major share of team targets (provided he is on the field, of course), but just how big is that slice of pie going to be? Xavier Worthy may not have set the heather alight, but he does still carry first-round draft capital, Travis Kelce is the wrong side of 36 (which ironically sounds like it would be the title of one of his new wife’s songs), and the aforementioned Ken Bone Walker will command his fair share out of the backfield. Rice may jump back to a 25% target share, but 25% of how much exactly?
Closing Statement
Ladies and gentlemen of the Fantasy Court, I am not the type of man to stand here and attempt to besmirch the physical talents of the defendant to make my case; his impressive statistics speak for themselves. After all, this is a wideout who managed to achieve a mammoth aDOT of 4.3 yards last season, a figure that saw him rank 109th out of 112 eligible WRs. Those are the kind of numbers – alongside a litany of off-field issues and injury woes – that really help a player stake his claim for a big-money deal in a contract year. Does there exist a world where the defendant cleans up his act, plays a full 17-game season, and finishes as a top-5 WR for fantasy? Sure; but I have used my handy Time Stone to search through all 14,000,605 futures, and let’s just say it does not look good for Mr. Rice.
The defense rests.