Entering the season, the goal for Chiefs receiver Rashee Rice was to have a strong second year, establish himself as a clear No. 1 receiver, and delay the consequences for his street-racing incident until 2025. Now that he has suffered a knee injury that apparently (but not definitely) will end his 2024 season, the plan will change.
The goal will become, we believe (and we’re told), to resolve the eight pending felony charges and to serve any suspension this year, while he’s otherwise unable to play. Then, come 2025, the incident, and the injury, will be behind him.
Some might call that cynical. Others would regard it as strategic. Because it is. If he’s going to miss time due to the off-field issue, why not serve the suspension while otherwise unable to play? (He’ll lose game checks, but he won’t lose on-field opportunities.)
Here’s something else that could be called both cynical and strategic. From a P.R. standpoint, telling the world that Rice has a torn ACL and won’t play this season makes a decision to promptly resolve his criminal case and serve a suspension in 2024 seem convenient.
Why not remain vague about his status, never providing a clear diagnosis or prognosis and simply putting him on IR and leaving him on IR and keeping the door open to a return? Then, if he’s suspended while he’s otherwise potentially preparing to return, it won’t seem like he’s unfairly getting a chance to double dip, serving a suspension from games he wouldn’t have played anyway.
It’s a subtle point, but it helps explain why the Chiefs have tapped the brakes on confirming that the ACL is torn, if it truly is.
The first step in implementing the revised plan will be to find a way to broach settlement talks with prosecutors in Dallas without losing leverage. The party that makes the first move generally is regarded as the party operating from a position of weakness.
Still, if the new goal will be to wrap this up before 2025, Rice’s representatives will need to find a way for him to take his medicine without having to swallow a bigger dose than he wants. And the more subtle goal should be to have a suspension land later in the year, when there’s still a vague sense he could play again in 2024 (even if he won’t) and when the duration of any suspension imposed by the league wouldn’t trickle into next year.
