A late season trial date sets up a potential late season suspension.
Kansas City Chiefs OTA Offseason Workouts / Jamie Squire/GettyImages
Somehow, the 2024 season looks to be a bounce-back year for the Kansas City Chiefs, even after winning back-to-back Super Bowls. They had a relatively bad roster in 2023, and things seemed to have been more or less shored up during the offseason.
That means we have to look for other ways to trick ourselves into thinking that the dynasty in KC will topple. This time, it’s the timing of the United States court system and the Rashee Rice legal situation. We’re in deep here.
Rashee Rice’s court date is an omen for the Chiefs
This isn’t a “rooting for injuries” type of thing. It’s unfortunate that the way a Chiefs’ downfall could potentially happen is because of legal issues that affected other people’s lives. Preferably, the way Mahomes loses his weapons is because of a clerical issue, and it turns out that the Chiefs have no money and they have to trade everyone away. Fingers crossed for that one.
If you’re not familiar with the whole Rashee Rice thing, just know that he’s in trouble with a handful of charges against him due to his involvement in a traffic incident in March. There’s been a lot of hubbub about if and/or when an NFL suspension would come.
Now we have news that his trial date has been set for Dec. 9, 2024, which is the day after the Los Angeles Chargers travel to Kansas City for Sunday Night Football in Week 14. That date is important for two reasons.
The obvious is that it would likely be a distraction for him going into a late-season divisional game. Those are the kind of games that can make or break a normal team’s season. The Chiefs are definitely not normal and Mahomes has proven that he doesn’t need good receivers to win in December, but still, it’s not nothing.
The other reason that date is important is because if there is an outcome in that trial that doesn’t favor Rice, a potential suspension could come in the late regular season or postseason. That would be a ludicrously inopportune time for the Chiefs to lose their WR1.
If we, as a football community, have any chance of seeing a potential step back in the Chiefs’ dynasty, it’s not going to be hoping that their on-field performance gets worse, because it won’t. The only hope we have is that Mahomes’ has to use significantly downgraded tools.
The past is the past and we have no way of changing it. Rashee Rice is in this situation and that’s reality. If everything unfolds and Rice does get suspended, it’s going to be bad for the Chiefs, and anything bad for the Chiefs is good for the vast majority of football fans.