- Quarterback issues plagued Hollywood Brown: Marquise “Hollywood” Brown had big-name quarterbacks throughout his career, but they weren’t necessarily great at deep ball accuracy, which was necessary for Brown to thrive.
- Patrick Mahomes connection key for '25: Brown's success in 2025 with the Kansas City Chiefs will largely depend on building chemistry with Mahomes, who could elevate Brown to a significant fantasy option if they click.
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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
PFF’s Fantasy Football Player Profile series delivers the most in-depth fantasy football analysis available for the 2025 season.
Using PFF’s exclusive data, we evaluate player performance, competition for touches and how teammates and coaching staffs
Last updated: 7:15 a.m. Friday, June 20
Player performance
Brown was a first-round pick for the Baltimore Ravens in 2019 and was expected to be a great deep threat. However, Lamar Jackson‘s deep ball accuracy was a major limitation. From 2019 to 2021, Jackson's deep ball accuracy was 32.9%, seventh-worst among quarterbacks with at least 100 deep attempts. During those three seasons, Brown caught 20 deep passes out of 70 targets, and only 26 were catchable. His average target depth was balanced by many passes thrown behind the line of scrimmage.
Brown was then traded to the Arizona Cardinals before the 2022 season. Over his two seasons with the team, just 30% of Kyler Murray‘s deep passes were charted as accurate, the fifth-worst among quarterbacks with at least 50 deep targets. Combining that with the backup quarterbacks who played while Murray was injured, the team had a 29.6% combined deep accuracy percentage, the fourth-lowest in the league. Additionally, 61.1% of their deep passes were completely uncatchable, the worst rate in the NFL.
Brown overcame the inaccurate passes in 2021 and 2022 to finish as a high-end WR3 on a per-game basis, but he played out of position with the Cardinals in 2023 as their X receiver after DeAndre Hopkins‘ departure.
Brown signed with the Kansas City Chiefs before the 2024 season, with the intention of him forming a strong wide receiver trio with Rashee Rice and Xavier Worthy. We got to see the three in action together for exactly one preseason snap, and then Brown suffered a separated shoulder. Brown wasn’t able to return until Week 15, where he caught five passes for 45 yards on eight targets on 20 offensive snaps. He played again in Week 17 in a slightly larger role, catching four passes for 46 yards. He sat out Week 18, as did several Chiefs. In the playoffs, his role expanded, playing 65-74% of his team's offensive snaps each game. However, he wasn’t as big a part of the offensive game plans. He caught five passes for 50 yards over three games.
Projected role
The Chiefs will ideally have the trio of wide receivers available that they intended to have for the 2024 season. Rashee Rice played excellently at the start of the season before his injury, while Xavier Worthy graded very well in at the end of the playoffs.
Brown will likely be a deep threat for Kansas City as originally anticipated, despite his low deep target rate in his two regular-season games. His deep target rate was up to 21.4% when you include the three playoff games. He was targeted six times on deep passes,but only one was catchable, and that pass was dropped. That is somewhat understandable given the playoff atmosphere, and Brown and Patrick Mahomes didn’t have the entire regular season to gain chemistry.
The Chiefs didn’t re-sign Justin Watson, who was their usual deep threat, so Browns’ deep targets could be even higher this season. Ideally, that is also mixed with some easy short passes, as he saw during his two regular-season games. However, with Rice returning, most of those targets could go to Rice and Worthy. Rice shined on a very low average depth of target over the last two seasons, and Worthy’s play started improving once he was more involved in shorter passes.
While the Chiefs don’t have a backup specifically for Brown, on plays he is off the field, Worthy will likely be the deep target. The Chiefs are much more fluid with their wide receiver rotation and playing time than most teams, so Rice, Worthy and Brown will all spend at least some time in the slot and run deep routes.
It’s rare for a team to have three fantasy-relevant wide receivers, but there is also a chance this Chiefs offense could be scoring 30 points per game if the three receivers can stay healthy and live up to their potential. That would make it possible for all three to be relevant. It’s also possible Rice isn’t 100% after his injury, or Worthy doesn’t play as well running deeper routes, which could move Brown up the target priority order.
Impact of teammates
Brown will be in his second season with Andy Reid as the head coach. The Chiefs have always had a high pass rate over expected. There is a chance the pass rate could be even higher this season with Rice and Brown healthy. They don’t have a high rate of throwing to wide receivers, but that’s largely been due to having Travis Kelce. With Kelce’s declining level of play, we should expect a notable increase in wide receiver targets. Similarly, the Chiefs had a low rate of three wide receiver sets last season, but that was largely due to the wide receiver injuries. There was a time when backup tight end Noah Gray was running more routes than most of the wide receivers. By the time Brown was healthy, this was no longer the case.
Brown will be catching Patrick Mahomes‘ passes, which remains a reason to be optimistic about Brown. Mahomes' deep accuracy last season was 35%, and over the last three seasons was 37.1%. This is a notable upgrade to what Brown’s had earlier in his career.
Mahomes was notably better when he had Tyreek Hill to throw to deep. Mahomes' deep accuracy was all the way up to 50% in 2019 and was consistently above 39% in his first five seasons. His accuracy may improve if he has stronger chemistry with a new deep threat in Brown. No NFL wide receiver in recent seasons has had Hill's speed. While the Chiefs have had other speedy wide receivers like Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Mecole Hardman Jr., neither has Brown's talent. Brown is the closest thing they’ve had to Hill since he left. That is the reason to consider drafting Brown, despite the significant competition for targets.
Bottom line
Brown is a risky late-round dart throw. The upside could be huge if he gains a lot of chemistry with Patrick Mahomes, but he could also be a complete non-factor for fantasy purposes if Rashee Rice and Xavier Worthy dominate targets.
Footnotes
- Statistics in tables and charts were chosen based on their ability to predict future fantasy performance on a per-game or per-opportunity basis or to describe the player relative to others at the same position.
- “Opportunities” are defined as passing dropbacks, rushing attempts and routes run as a receiver.
- Numbers are provided either by season or based on the past three years. For rookies, only college statistics are included. For non-rookies, only NFL statistics are considered, regardless of whether they played in college within the previous three years.
- As college competition is easier than NFL competition, most rookies are likely to see a decline from their historical numbers.
- Only FBS data is considered for college players and comparisons.
- Kneel-downs are removed from rushing data to provide cleaner quarterback rushing rate statistics.
- The table colors in this article range from blue (indicating good/high) to red (indicating bad/low).
- All percentiles and color codings compare the given player to others with a high sample of opportunities. Generally, the cutoff is one-third of the possible opportunities in the sample. If a player does not meet the threshold, they are still included in the comparison, though their results may appear better or worse than expected due to the smaller, less predictive sample size.
- Information on utilization classifications and their importance can be found here for running backs, wide receivers and tight ends.
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