Chiefs may be selling wide receiver depth that doesn’t really exist

Stop me if you've heard this: A future guest of the commissioner’s office, two injury-prone receivers, a rookie, and two replacement-level players walk into a bar. That's less a joke and more an assessment of the composition of the Kansas City Chiefs' receiving room. Availability remains a concern for this group ahead of the 2025 season.

One thing we can be relatively certain about is that Rashee Rice will eventually be suspended by the NFL. It's unknown what the length of his suspension will be, but the Chiefs will be without him for a stretch this season. Other risk factors are tougher to predict, but it’s fair to ask questions about the challenges this position group might face in 2025.

The Chiefs WR room is a collective risk that deserves more discussion coming into 2025.

Arrowhead Addict editor Matt Conner recently posted that while Hollywood Brown has faced some injuries throughout his career, they've rarely been of the catastrophic kind. According to him, prior to coming to Kansas City in 2024, Brown averaged 13 starts per year. Were that pattern to hold, the Chiefs could expect to be without Brown for about a month of the season.

Unfortunately, he's not the only veteran receiver in Kansas City who's had his share of injuries.

JuJu Smith-Schuster is another receiver who has been nicked up on a fairly regular basis. Dating back to 2021, there's only been one season over that span where he's played 16 games. For comparison's sake, over that period, Smith-Schuster has averaged eight starts per season. So the likelihood is that either Smith-Schuster or Brown, or perhaps both, will be injured at some point this year.

By now, we're all familiar with head coach Andy Reid's sordid history with rookie receiver contributions. Far more often than not, historically speaking, they’ve rarely made significant contributions in Year One. In recent years, Rashee Rice and Xavier Worthy have bucked this trend. Though if you look more closely at their rookie campaigns, Week 10 or 11 was the ignition point for both players.

So for Jalen Royals, fourth-round pick of the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2025 NFL Draft, it's reasonable to expect that he will also need some ramp-up time in this offense. Unfortunately, in his case, the path to regular-season snaps isn’t as clear. Even with Rice out, he's still arguably fourth in the receiving pecking order.

With the Chiefs likely to carry six receivers on the 53-man roster, that leaves just two spots for a field of Tyquan Thornton, Skyy Moore, and Nikko Remigio. Which player in that trio do you expect to be a meaningful piece in Kansas City's offense in 2025? Remigio's roster spot largely depends on his ability as a returner. Thornton and Moore, at this stage of their NFL careers, haven't lived up to draft expectations.

I'm not here to make the case that the Chiefs need a veteran addition at receiver. We've had that discussion already. I'm simply asking questions about the purported depth they have at the position. The snap-to-snap dependability of this group is a concern. What the Chiefs must do to address that is open for debate.