Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes Laments Life Without Elite WR

Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes will have to start the 2024 season without one of his prized offseason acquisitions.

Wide receiver Marquise “Hollywood” Brown is now expected to miss up to six weeks due to a sternoclavicular injury sustained in the Chiefs’ first preseason game, meaning Mahomes and the Chiefs will have to make do without him as they take on the Baltimore Ravens and the Cincinnati Bengals in the first two weeks of the season.

Kansas City Chiefs WR Hollywood Brown went to the hospital for the injury sustained in the preseason game

Similar to former Chiefs WR Tyreek Hill in 2019, Brown had to go to a nearby hospital for his injury as a sternoclavicular injury can have life-threatening implications.

Brown does not have to undergo surgery for the injury, but the injury will force the Chiefs to have to make do without him to start the season.

Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy explained it’s “next man up” in an article from ArrowheadPride.

“I think it’s one of those deals where they just got to know it’s next-man-up mentality,” said the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator Matt Nagy on Tuesday. “We want Hollywood to get back as soon as he can, but we’ve got to keep rolling — and we’ve got the guys to do it.”

Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes says he will miss Hollywood Brown

Mahomes expressed the impact that Brown has on the team and how much he will miss the veteran presence he brings to the locker room in an article from Pro Football Talk.

Mahomes has done just fine without Brown in the last five seasons, but offseason work with Brown has been so impactful that Mahomes is already lamenting his absence.

“I guess we’re lucky that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been,” Mahomes said, via Adam Teicher of ESPN.com. “We lose a little bit of that veteran-type receiver in that room. We have other guys that can replace him a little bit, but to have that much talent and have a good understanding of what I want . . . hopefully we’re getting him back sooner rather than later. We’ve just got to keep pushing those young [receivers] to keep getting better and better every day.”

Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes can make it work with whatever WRs he has

The Chiefs dynasty began with Mahomes throwing to one of the best WRs in the league, Tyreek Hill. After Hill left to join the Miami Dolphins, many thought Mahomes and the Chiefs would struggle to sustain the extremely high-powered offense they fielded in 2019.

After a loss in the AFC Championship Game with Hill in 2021, the Chiefs proceeded to win back-to-back Super Bowls without Hill in 2022 and 2023.

Similarly, many thought Mahomes would take a step back after going into 2023 with the WR room headlined by rookie Rashee Rice, Sky Moore and Marquez Valdes-Scantling. He then went on to win the Super Bowl again that year.

The addition of Brown made it hard for the rest of the NFL to see a world without the Chiefs on top once again, but if Mahomes was able to win a Super Bowl with the WR room he had last year, he will be able to survive the early part of the season without Brown.

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