100 Questions: Fantasy Football 2024 (Kansas City Chiefs)

As we head toward the start of the 2024 NFL and fantasy football season, FTN Fantasy editor-in-chief Daniel Kelley is asking (and attempting to answer) the 100 most pressing questions in fantasy football. This is 100 Questions. Today: The Kansas City Chiefs.

It’s not just that the Chiefs are an NFL dynasty, with two straight Super Bowl wins and three in the last five seasons. It’s that they are rolling the entire AFC. Like, when the Cavaliers went to four straight NBA Finals last decade, they beat the Eastern Conference every year, but really they beat the Celtics and Raptors three times each, the Pacers and Hawks twice and the Pistons and Bulls once each. They didn’t have some massive variety of opponents, it was just LeBron James going “You again? Go home, puny mortal.”

Contrast that with this Chiefs’ run. Patrick Mahomes has started for the Chiefs for six years. In that time, the Chiefs have beaten 10 of the other 14 AFC teams in the playoffs, with only the Bills being a repeat loss. (They had a repeat matchup against the Bengals, but the teams have split their postseason games.) That means the Chiefs are a playoff run (admittedly an unlikely one) beating three of the Raiders, Chargers, Patriots and Jets away from nearly taking out the entire AFC in one dynasty run.

They’re good against everyone, and that means they are good against everyone.

The Questions

50. Is Travis Kelce Still Travis Kelce?
51. How High Is Isiah Pacheco’s Ceiling?
52. How Do These WRs Shake Out?

100 Questions for 2024: Kansas City Chiefs

50. Is Travis Kelce Still Travis Kelce?

I’m not entirely sure how to check this, because Stathead won’t let you do the searches I’d need for this with combined regular-season and playoff totals, but I would bet good money that Travis Kelce’s 180 games played in the last decade would be an all-time record in a world where Tom Brady never existed. I know it’s out in front in the last 10 years, but it seems very likely it’s the record for any 10-year stretch outside of Foxboro. (If you limit it to “most games for a single team,” I’m fairly certain Brady’s 2008 injury and 2016 suspension give the crown to Kelce anyway.) He rarely misses games (five in 10 years, mostly games that didn’t matter), he’s played some of that time in 17-game seasons, and the Chiefs’ wild success of late means he has added a whopping 22 playoff games to that regular season total.

CHICAGO, IL - DECEMBER 22: Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce (87) runs with the football in game action during an NFL game between the Chicago Bears and the Kansas City Chiefs on December 22, 2019 at Soldier Field in Chicago, IL. (Photo by Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire) — CHICAGO, IL – DECEMBER 22: Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce (87) runs with the football in game action during an NFL game between the Chicago Bears and the Kansas City Chiefs on December 22, 2019 at Soldier Field in Chicago, IL. (Photo by Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire)

First, that’s a testament to one of the best tight ends of all time. But second, it might go a long way toward explaining why Kelce’s 2023 featured his lowest targets per game (8.1) and average depth of target (6.9 yards) since 2016. Kelce averaged 8.1 targets per game in the regular season last year, then when the playoffs came, it upped to 9.3, including as many 10-plus-target games in four postseason games (3) as he had in 15 regular season games.

It is worth noting, though, that Kelce’s 2023 opened with a missed game. It was only the second game Kelce missed (other than the final week of the season) since 2013, and the other one was merely an absence due to COVID-19 protocols. Kelce didn’t reach a 65% snap rate in a game until Week 4, didn’t cross 80% until Week 8. But then he played at least 80% of the Chiefs’ snaps in six of his last nine regular-season games and all four postseason games.

If Kelce’s light-by-his-standards use in 2023 was a strategy borne of “Yo, he’s kinda old now,” well, he’s a year older now, and it stands to reason that his 2024 would be even lighter as the Chiefs pursue their three-peat. If instead it was more a factor of him hyperextending his knee right before Week 1 and needing some easing in just to get to full strength, well, so long as he’s healthy in this preseason, there’s every reason he could be back to normal.

The snap counts last year are enough to convince me that Kelce’s due for a bounceback in 2024 (if one can really “bounce back” from a TE3 finish). But the reduced play overall makes me want to hedge. Translation: Still take Kelce as the overall TE1 (sorry, Sam LaPorta), but he’s definitely no longer in the first-round conversation. Still, if you feel like being bold and want to take Kelce late in the second round, you’ll get some weird looks in your draft room. But rest assured, they won’t come from me.

How High Is Isiah Pacheco’s Ceiling?

I am a big believer in watching what teams do over what they say. If I may toot my own horn slightly, I correctly predicted Dak Prescott’s career year last year because, while everything Mike McCarthy said indicated the team would run more, everything they did made me think they’d be throwing it a lot more, and lo and behold, that happened.

That said, it’s even better when what a team says and what a team did aligns. This offseason, the Chiefs let Jerick McKinnon go. And while that’s easy enough to explain away as “Well, he’ll be 32 when the season starts and has had a lot of injuries,” the team also didn’t add any running backs more notable than UDFAs Emani Bailey and Carson Steele and rugby player Louis Rees-Zammit. Andy Reid has been telling people Pacheco is going to be more involved as a receiver, which sounds great, but coaches stay that stuff all the time (remember “Antonio Gibson is the next Christian McCaffrey”?). The fact that they paired what they said with doing nothing else at the position really points to “No, yeah, he’s gonna get a lot of targets.”

McKinnon handled half or more of the Chiefs’ two-minute drills and third- or fourth-and-long snaps last year. If Pacheco — who climbed from the PPR RB37 with 14 targets in 2022 to PPR RB15 with 49 targets last year — can flirt with McKinnon’s receiving work, he has solid mid-range RB1 upside. He’s a fine value as RB10 in ADP, but I would definitely take him over RB8 (Travis Etienne Jr.) and maybe the RB6 and RB7 (Jahmyr Gibbs and Kyren Williams).

How Do These WRs Shake Out?

The Chiefs had a mystery bag at wide receiver last year. Second-year second-rounder Skyy Moore? Rookie second-rounder Rashee Rice? Former first-rounder Kadarius Toney? What about Marquez Valdes-Scantling, who had flashes in Green Bay, or Richie James, who had briefly been something in New York? Maybe even Justyn Ross, who once upon a time had been one of the most exciting college prospects before injuries took him out. Through Week 6, the answer was “basically nobody.” Rice was leading the way with 57.2 PPR points, but that was only WR48 at that point, and no one else was even at 35 points.

KANSAS CITY, MO - SEPTEMBER 07: Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice (4) celebrates a 1-yard touchdown reception in the second quarter of an NFL game between the Detroit Lions and Kansas City Chiefs on Sep 7, 2023 at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, MO. (Photo by Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire) — KANSAS CITY, MO – SEPTEMBER 07: Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice (4) celebrates a 1-yard touchdown reception in the second quarter of an NFL game between the Detroit Lions and Kansas City Chiefs on Sep 7, 2023 at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, MO. (Photo by Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire)

This year, it’s very different. Rice started his first game in Week 7 and was the WR12 the rest of the way, finishing his rookie year with 102 targets, 938 yards and 7 touchdowns before averaging over 8 targets in the Chiefs’ playoff run. And then they added Marquise Brown in free agency and spent a first-round pick on Xavier Worthy (and traded up for the right to do so). After a season where the question was “Will the Chiefs have a receiver we care about?,” now it’s “Which Chiefs receiver do we care about the most?”

Brown and Worthy are both mega speedsters, almost redundant skillsets, except you can’t have too much speed. The problem is that Patrick Mahomes has never really been a bombs-away quarterback, and he’s progressively gotten less so:

Year	Average Depth of Target
2018	9.5 Yards
2019	8.7 Yards
2020	8.9 Yards
2021	7.6 Yards
2022	7.7 Yards
2023	6.8 Yards

It’s fair to wonder how much of that has been Mahomes’ own adjustments (related to two-high defenses taking away his deep ball) and how much is “Tyreek Hill is gone and his replacement is question mark,” but this is a quarterback who has been the best in the game for years without relying on the deep ball. So we’ll have to see whether he throws it enough for not one but two elite speedsters to thrive in that offense style.

Note: I wrote this before Saturday’s Marquise Brown injury. That is very likely to shift the Chiefs receiver ADPs dramatically, so monitor how they change before committing if possible.

The questions about Rice are extremely different. The talent isn’t really in doubt. It’s just his availability. Rice is facing a potential suspension, and we don’t know when it will happen or how long it will be. But we more or less know the league isn’t going to levy a suspension until the court system plays out, and the longer it takes for the courts to get going, the more likely it is Rice’s suspension (if it happens) won’t come until 2025. At this point, I’d almost bet on that.

So Rice is the receiver in Kansas City with the unique skill set, and he’s looking increasingly likely to be available all year. That explains why, in the week-plus since we wrote the Chiefs’ entry in Sleepers, Busts & Bold Predictions, Rice has risen in ADP from third among the Chiefs receivers to first. But it’s still a hedge. As I write this, Rice is WR36, Brown WR37, Worthy WR41. Rice could easily rise 5-10 spots from there and I wouldn’t blink. Take him, and take advantage of the fear of a suspension that is not likely to come any time soon.