With Rashee Rice out indefinitely with a knee injury that's yet to be updated with any kind of certainty, Kansas City will need other players to step up. Xavier Worthy and Travis Kelce are certainly possibilities. But so is JuJu Smith-Schuster.
Initial reports on Rice were a torn ACL, but the team hasn't confirmed that. Maybe it will wind up being only a partial tear, or an MCL injury. Partial or no, he's going to miss extensive time; that seems pretty certain.
Smith-Schuster wasn't even on a roster this summer, and was pretty modest in New England last season. But consider his work with Kansas City in 2022.
That season, Smith-Schuster played more than half the snaps 17 times (including the playoffs). He had at least 18 fantasy points (PPR) in nearly a third of those games (5), and over 12 points in three others. A solid starter in half of those games, and that Kansas City team had a healthy Isiah Pacheco and Jerick McKinnon and a two years younger Travis Kelce.
| JUJU WITH KC, 2022 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opp | Tgt | Rec | Yds | TD | PPR |
| at S.F. | 8 | 7 | 124 | 1 | 25.4 |
| at Den. | 11 | 9 | 74 | 1 | 22.4 |
| Buf. | 5 | 5 | 113 | 1 | 22.3 |
| Ten. | 12 | 10 | 88 | 0 | 18.8 |
| at Hou. | 10 | 10 | 88 | 0 | 18.8 |
| at Ari. | 8 | 6 | 79 | 0 | 13.9 |
| at Ind. | 8 | 5 | 89 | 0 | 13.9 |
| Phi. | 9 | 7 | 53 | 0 | 12.3 |
| at T.B. | 8 | 5 | 46 | 0 | 9.6 |
| at Cin. | 4 | 3 | 35 | 0 | 6.5 |
| L.V. | 8 | 3 | 33 | 0 | 6.3 |
| Sea. | 4 | 3 | 27 | 0 | 5.7 |
| at L.V. | 2 | 2 | 35 | 0 | 5.5 |
| Jac. | 2 | 2 | 29 | 0 | 4.9 |
| Den. | 3 | 2 | 21 | 0 | 4.1 |
| LAC | 3 | 3 | 10 | 0 | 4.0 |
| Cin. | 1 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 1.7 |
I realize some fantasy leagues run waivers on Tuesday nights, and this recommendation might be too late. But Smith-Schuster is definitely worth adding where available. In the realm of possibility he's the team's best receiver the rest of the way.
--Andy Richardson