Admin August 29, 2024
Throughout the last several months, those in Kansas City Chiefs circles have spent plenty of time trying to analyze every angle of wide receiver Rashee Rice’s offseason. Following a multi-vehicle accident in March that Rice was involved in, some expected the NFL to potentially suspend the former second-round pick ahead of the season, while others hypothesized that no discipline would be coming down in 2024.
According to a Wednesday night report from Mark Maske of The Washington Post, the league “is not expected” to put Rice on the Commissioner’s Exempt List. Additionally, a final call on any sort of suspension will be made “once the legal process plays out,” according to Maske. That, in turn, suggests Rice figures to be free to play out the 2024-25 campaign in the interim. Maske obtained a brief statement from the NFL regarding its timeline for a decision:
“We continue to closely monitor all developments in the matter which remains under review,” the statement began. “We will let the legal process play out before making any decisions.”
On the same day as Maske’s report, a new trial date for a civil lawsuit against Rice and SMU football player Theodore Knox was set. Edvard Petrovskiy and Irina Gromova are seeking damages in their lawsuit, as we already knew, but the report of a trial start date on June 23, 2025, is new. That’s without considering preexisting details on a separate lawsuit Rice was named in, which had its trial date of December 9, 2024, set back in May. Kamlesh Desai is seeking over $1 million.
The trickiest part of a potential suspension call is that the NFL appears far more interested in the results of Rice’s criminal trial rather than his civil one(s). The second-year player is facing multiple felony charges stemming from the aforementioned crash, but there isn’t any public knowledge of a date for that trial even being established. Without that handled, the league is choosing to play the waiting game.
When asked about his situation during training camp, Rice repeatedly mentioned his legal “team” handling the situation. He later expanded on continuing to evolve and learn from this experience, citing the need to have better influences around him.
“Just continue to surround myself with people that I want to be like,” Rice said. “Continue to surround myself with people that are going to allow me to grow.”
So what’s next for everyone involved? Rice is still set to go to trial for the civil matters, he’s going to play Week 1 against the Baltimore Ravens, and while the NFL waits on standby, he isn’t out of the woods just yet. Despite a relatively cut-and-dried sequence of events on March 30 and considerable time passing since the incident, the league appears set to wait for a criminal trial to be narrowed down before passing judgment.
