Arrowhead Pride
Welcome back to the Arrowhead Pride Mailbag! Each week, watch for your opportunity to submit your Kansas City Chiefs questions in The Feed, which is found on AP’s home page.
After putting the NFL on notice with dominant win over the Detroit Lions — and with the ever-hated Las Vegas Raiders coming to GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Week 7 — let’s see what is on our readers’ minds.
Do you believe the Chiefs will let wide receiver Rashee Rice loose right away? Or will they ease him into action to protect his knee?
A few weeks make a big difference. The Chiefs could not have imagined a better scenario for Rice’s return from his six-game suspension — and a major knee injury suffered 13 months ago — though fantasy owners awaiting return on investment might disagree.
For about the first ten quarters of the Chiefs’ season, Rice was almost treated as a mythical figure — the long-awaited savior of a stagnant offense. Since the second half of Week 3’s victory over the New York Giants, however, Patrick Mahomes and the offense have more than come to life.
Kansas City certainly needs Rice to unlock the unit’s full potential, but the team no longer needs him to turn the unit around. That wasn’t the case a month ago. In addition, the two players who have largely absorbed Rice’s targets — JuJu Smith-Schuster and Travis Kelce — look healthy and are playing their best football in recent memory.
In front of a home crowd against a divisional foe, expect the Chiefs to have some things dialed up for Rice in his season debut. Look for him in the red zone and on medium-range third downs. But it might take a couple of weeks — perhaps by game against the suddenly vulnerable Buffalo Bills in Week 9 — before Rice returns to the volume we saw last season.
But after the Week 10 bye, I expect Rice to be the undisputed focal point of the offense.
I hear a lot of fans saying we should trade for one position or another. But are the Chiefs actually buyers at the trade deadline — and if so, what position do they truly need to improve?
I have tepid expectations for Kansas City at this year’s trade deadline. To start, the Chiefs will likely begin next offseason more than $30 million over the salary cap — and currently have only 35 players signed for 2026. That doesn’t lend itself to giving up draft capital. The team would be wiser to roll its current cap space — roughly $4.1 million — into next year.
Looking around the league, there also aren’t many obvious sellers. With leaguewide parity and a seventh playoff seed in each conference, most teams will still consider themselves contenders by the November 4 deadline.
A running back addition would make some sense. The Chiefs should be interested in any available dynamic starter...
