Hollywood Brown's skillset will be tough to replace
If the Chiefs WR has to miss significant time, that poses a problem for Mahomes and company.
You never want an injury to be the first thing you write about following a preseason game.
I was SO ready to talk to you all about Kingsley Suamataia’s limited snaps (and about what the fact that his snaps were SO limited means), but that will wait one more day. Because Hollywood Brown’s injury is significant enough that it should be discussed. Especially given his unique skillset among the Chiefs’ receivers, which hasn’t been talked about enough as people consider the implications of him missing time.
I’ll circle back to that. First, in case you missed it, Brown was hurt very early (the first offensive snap, in fact) against the Jaguars.
The play itself seems pretty run-of-the-mill, but unfortunately Brown ended up suffering the same injury that sidelined Tyreek Hill several years back (called an SC joint dislocation). You can read up a bit on that type of injury here, but the short story is that Brown looks likely to miss at least 4-5 weeks. Which puts him at missing Week 1 and (very possibly, if not even likely) several additional weeks beyond that as his body heals. It’s a bummer for a player on a one-year “prove it” deal, though Brown himself seems to be taking it in stride.
Plenty of people will be talking about this injury in the upcoming weeks, but I think it’s appropriate to really dive into what makes it problematic for the Chiefs. The focus of most (at least so far from what I’ve seen analyzing the situation) is simply that Brown is a good receiver and that losing a good receiver (especially after what happened last season) is always bad. I’ve also seen talk about how this puts more pressure than ever on rookie Xavier Worthy and second-year WR (and apparently not-suspended-to-start-the-season) Rashee Rice, and that’s accurate.
But what I think hasn’t been talked about much in the immediate aftermath is how, of all the Chiefs’ receivers, Brown’s skillset may be the most problematic to duplicate or even come close to replacing. It’s a situation where role, skillset, and replicability on the roster makes losing him potentially even worse than just him being a good wide receiver. This is especially true given the problems he was brought on board to help solve from a schematic sense, as well as the nature of the other players on the roster.
Let’s talk about how Brown’s specific skillset is going to be very tough for the Chiefs to replace (or even mostly replace) without a major surprise from Worthy or someone else on the roster. It’s not a fun conversation, but it is an important one.
The short story is that no one else on the roster has shown they can do the things Brown can do, including Rice, who is a very different type of receiver than Brown.