A look at local link to Chiefs
Broadneck’s Mauldin is rookie WR’s cousin
Before senior night on Oct. 27, Broadneck football players crowded into their locker room to watch one of the top rookies in the National Football League give them advice on how to handle playoff runs.
Surprise, bewilderment and excitement bounced around the walls. No one could understand why Rashee Rice, wide receiver for the now Super Bowl-bound Kansas City Chiefs, had taken the time to make a video speaking directly to a little high school team in Annapolis.
Not even his first cousin knew it was coming.
Junior running back Ian Mauldin couldn’t help but buckle over laughing as his teammates turned all their confusion onto him. “He’s on my fantasy team!” one teammate yelled.
“The funniest part was one of the [offensive] linemen, Branden Stahl,” Mauldin said, still laughing at the memory almost four months later. “His jaw was to the ground.”
During one of their earlier phone calls, Mauldin regaled Rice with news about his upcoming games when he noticed his cousin went quiet. What Mauldin didn’t know was his father secretly cooking up the video with Rice.
Brysean Williams talks with his nephew, whom he nicknamed “Little Fats” after himself, almost daily — even outside all the East Coast trips he and the family make to watch their star play each week. There’s one topic that always comes up.
“All he does is talk about Ian’s potential,” Williams said. “He tells Ian, ‘I’m not the one. You’re literally the one.’ ”
Long before the Super Bowl or a spot on the Chiefs ever became a possibility, Rice lived under the same roof with Mauldin and his older siblings in Philadelphia. He was only 5 years old when the family left what they worried was a worsening environment in the city. But Mauldin remembers scampering around a backyard fruit tree with Rice and his older brother, Xavier — three brothers in spirit.
Williams wanted his children to experience the same prosperity he had in Anne Arundel County, and all of them did. Older siblings stayed in touch with Rice, but Ian Mauldin wouldn’t end up speaking with his cousin again for nearly a decade.
Until Rice played his first games as a freshman wideout at Southern Methodist University.
sity.
Like Mauldin, Rice didn’t remain in Philadelphia. Moving to Texas led him to star for Richland High in North Richland Hills where he collected 1,386 receiving yards in his junior season, received 23 college offers, earn three stars and a top-100 Texas ranking before picking the Mustangs.
At the time, Williams always saw his son coming home talking about college players he’d seen on social media.
“Meanwhile you have a cousin at SMU. Ian wasn’t really paying attention,” Williams said. “So, I started taking Ian instead of just telling him.”
Reconnecting was awkward at first, Mauldin remembered. But the two cousins began texting and FaceTiming more and more, occasionally blooming to three, four times a week. Mauldin realized this incredible player clearly bound for stardom really was family, the vague figure in his memories running around the yard with him. The conversations started swerving toward football as Mauldin began to realize his own skill.
“Our conversations turned so heartfelt. It’s not really training talk, more like football skills,” Mauldin said. “He tells me to stay quick on my feet and keep my eyes open. Be elusive.”
Mauldin spent his first varsity season as a sophomore, totaling 149 carries for 1,045 yards and 15 touchdowns, proving he would be a fixture of the Broadneck offense for years to come. Meanwhile, Rice spent the 2022 season recording six 100-yard receiving games and preparing for the NFL. He waited until the second round and 55th spot of the 2023 draft to be picked up by the Chiefs.
“I think Ian saw how hard Rashee really worked,” Williams said. “Now, I have to call him from the gym and remind him to come home. I see that look in his eye.”
Rice caught his first touchdown in the first week of the 2023 NFL season. At the same time, Mauldin began shouldering an even heavier burden as the Bruins’ top receiver, Eli Harris, went down in the second week to injury and missed two games. The Bruins’ quarterback role also shifted more than once. Mauldin remained a constant for the offense, taking 185 carries for 1,069 yards and 15 touchdowns while also making 13 receptions for 187 yards and two scores, despite missing two later games to his own injury.
“I think they run very similarly,” Broadneck coach Rob Harris said. “I see Ian in Rice every time I watch the Chiefs.”
Rice never stopped coaching Mauldin, even as his own team’s season dipped into a string of losses and stinging chatter about the Chiefs wide receiver room spread. On Oct. 6, the Bruins dropped a close game to Old Mill, ultimately sacrificing the county title with that singular defeat. Earlier in the week, Kansas City barely squeaked past the New York Jets. Two days after Broadneck’s loss, the Chiefs nearly dropped another game to the Minnesota Vikings.
And the advice stayed true.
“He always tells me to keep pushing towards my goal. That I’m gonna get it as long as I keep working hard, and even then — always give one extra rep with everything,” Mauldin said. “Because he said that’s what made him the best.”
On a frigid Nov. 24 night, Mauldin ran in the clinching touchdown that secured Broadneck its spot in the Class 4A state final. But the Bruins ultimately could not withstand Wise, a regular at the state level.
Rice told his crestfallen cousin, “It’s still a game at the end of the day.”
But Rice’s rookie season forged on. In Week 12, the receiver tallied his first 100-yard receiving game. Fifteen weeks in, Rice snapped the Chiefs single-season rookie receiving touchdowns record. On Jan. 13, Rice pulled in his first NFL playoff touchdown in the Chiefs’ first-round blowout over the Miami Dolphins. ATwo weeks later came the AFC Championship — at the Baltimore Ravens.
That particular matchup made Mauldin public enemy No. 1 to his Broadneck
classmates and even teachers the entire week leading up to the game. Mauldin was a red dot in a sea of purple, and proud of it.
“Everyone’s telling me we’re going to lose. People are betting me money. In the football group chat, they were all talking to trash to me,” Mauldin said.
Rice made eight catches for 46 yards. It could’ve been more, but what would’ve been Rice’s only touchdown was axed when officials called teammate Trey Smith for holding.
Still, the 17-10 final made Rice an AFC Champion. Mauldin celebrated: “I trolled everybody in the group chat.”
Harris praised Mauldin’s work this offseason and pictures he’ll be “the center of the Broadneck offense” next fall. As to what that’ll look like, Broadneck can thank Rice.
“He’s gonna do more receiving,” Williams said. “He hangs around these NFL wide receivers and he’s the same height as them, and they tell him: scrap running back. You’ll be a college wide receiver.”
Before high school, Mauldin never let his plans for football roam past Broadneck. He knew he fell somewhere at “above-average” on the scale, but that was it. Thinking he could ever climb to the NFL was foolish.
Rice falling back into his life turned a black-andwhite dream into full color.
“It really opened my eyes and gave me a different hope and drive,” Mauldin said. “The NFL is a genuine goal of mine now.”