Andy Reid Explains How Rashee Rice’s Growth Helped Travis Kelce, KC Chiefs’ Season
For most of the 2023-24 season, the Kansas City Chiefs were a team held back by their offense. That was unfamiliar territory for a franchise led by Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, although one specific player helped turn things around.
The development of wide receiver Rashee Rice as a rookie may have saved Kansas City's season.
It's on record how much of an impact Rice made during his debut campaign. In 16 regular-season games, he hauled in 79 passes for 938 yards and seven touchdowns — all figures that comfortably led the wideout room. Rice and Kelce accounted for a huge chunk of the Chiefs' receiving statistics, aiding Mahomes in fine-tuning things for the playoffs. The rest is history, as a Super Bowl LVIII win over the San Francisco 49ers secured back-to-back titles.
Reid believes Rice's growth was monumental. Appearing on a Thursday episode of Colin Cowherd's "The Herd" on FS1, the future Hall of Fame head coach praised his young receiver.
"This is the one thing that I knew, Colin," Reid said. "It's so important — if you were a quarterback, you'd know this — that sweet zone for you is inside those numbers. And we've got one of the best that's ever done it with Kels (Kelce). Kels has always had Sundance next to him, with the 'Butch Cassidy and Sundance' analogy here, he's always had that guy to work with him. That's so important for working inside those numbers. It's a happy zone for the quarterbacks, and then you've got to get two guys that can play them. We've had Sammy (Watkins) here, we've had JuJu (Smith-Schuster), (Byron) Pringle jumped in. They know how to play in zones, they know how to get off of man coverage. They know how to play in that tight area there. And that becomes so important for Kelce.
"People were going, 'Kelce's over the hill.' Well, no, we just needed Rashee to keep growing, and he was so willing to do that and Patrick was so willing to work with him and never got frustrated with him or anything else. It worked out. We all had hope, we just needed to keep growing. We saw it the year before with our defense. Our secondary were a bunch of young guys and they just kept getting better and better and better and by the time we got to the playoffs, they were rolling."
Kelce rebounded when it mattered most, but he sure didn't show signs of doing so beforehand. In his final six weeks of the season, he averaged five catches and 57 receiving yards per game while failing to reach the end zone even once. Rice, on the other hand, posted numbers that extrapolate to 122 catches, 1,468 yards and eight scores in a full season. After some rest and someone else evolving to take pressure off him, however, Kelce had 355 yards and three touchdowns in four playoff games.
Moving forward, it would benefit the Chiefs to bring in one more reliable weapon for Mahomes. Kelce and Rice is a nice start, although something else is needed to return to a top-five offensive standing in the league. With defense typically changing year-to-year, a bounce-back campaign on the other side of the ball would keep the club's competitive window wide open. Reid is confident in the foundation, even as Kelce ages, due to Rice's emergence as a rookie. What does the soon-to-be sophomore have in store? Despite setting a high baseline, there's plenty of room to grow.
