Rashee Rice likely will play the entire 2024 season, despite felony charges

During last night’s pregame show, I provided an update on the Rashee Rice situation. We addressed it in further detail this morning, during PFT Live.

The NFL makes paid leave available for players who face felony charges. Rice faces felony charges — eight of them — from a Dallas street-racing incident in March 2024.

So why has he not been placed on paid leave?

The most obvious explanation is that the league typically uses paid leave (a/k/a the Commissioner Exempt list) in cases involving domestic violence. Rice’s case did not. Although things could have turned out much worse, it involved behavior that should be deterred. Rice (and those in the other cars involved in the crash) got lucky this time. Next time, the luck could break a different way.

Still, the league has said it doesn’t anticipate placing Rice on paid leave, absent a “material change” in the case. One such change could come from a guilty plea, to one or more felony charges. At that pont, the league could put him on paid leave pending the official internal Personal Conduct Policy review and punishment.

A guilty plea during the 2024 season is unlikely, however. Per a source with knowledge of the situation, there’s no trial date. It will happen, as the earliest, in December 2024. Thus, there’s no urgency to reach a plea deal until the lawyers are staring at a trial date.

Of course, if the prosecutors choose to try to stick it to Rice, they could offer him a deal now — with a short fuse for accepting it and a threat/promise that, if he rejects it, the case will go to trial on all charges. That would force Rice to choose between legal outcome and career outcome.

For now, the thinking is that Rice (who had 103 receiving yards last night) could have a huge second season. If the case is resolved after the 2024 campaign and if he serves a suspension to start the season, he will already be established as a great player before the suspension starts.

It’s hard to imagine Rice not being suspended, eventually. But it’s currently unlikely that he’ll miss time in 2024 due to the off-field issue.