We need to talk about Hollywood Brown and whether he can have a breakout season in his first year in Kansas City. Looking back at his career, he had one 1000-yard season (barely) with Baltimore all the way back in 2021. He might be three years removed from that kind of production thanks to two lackluster seasons in Arizona, but I think there’s a decent chance he gets back to that threshold this year with the Chiefs.
He’s had QB issues both years in Arizona – Kyler Murray was banged up for most of his two-year stint there – and he was stuck on an extremely slow, low volume passing offense in Baltimore (thanks Greg Roman). Now, Brown will be in an uptempo, pass-first offense with the best QB in the NFL in Patrick Mahomes under center. Yes, he has target competition – but I think his talent and his ability matches what the Chiefs want to do on offense, and he’s going to be part of the reason Mahomes will start to sling it much further down the field (something he couldn’t do much of over the last two seasons). Mahomes hasn’t had that deep threat at his disposal since Tyreek Hill left for South Beach, but Brown fits the bill to revive that role in the Chiefs’ passing game.
With Marquise Brown in the fold along with first round rookie WR Xavier Worthy, embattled WR Rashee Rice, and TE Travis Kelce, Kansas City has several threats in the middle of the field and a couple of threats downfield. That’s great news, because teams are going to have to pick their poison each week trying to defend those weapons. I think Hollywood benefits in a huge way because of that, and I also believe that Rashee Rice will have a big year as well when he’s on the field.
The difference between Brown and Rice is availability. Because Hollywood has a chance to be there for every game, he could end up being an every-week WR2 - maybe with some volatility, of course, given their multitude of weapons, but I don’t see them taking Hollywood off the field a whole lot this year. Outside of his rookie year, he was a pretty solid target earner - 22% or higher every year since. Even 20% would amount to 120 targets in the Chiefs offense, which I would happily take all day long seeing as those opportunities are being delivered via the right hand of Patrick Mahomes.