Since the start of 2024 in the league we have won 14 drawn 1 and just lost 1 game (Villa). He wasnt even particularly bad in that game, just not his usual outstanding performance. He has been so consistent that those games are very rare. Unless you expect 100m players to be faultless in 100% of their games, which of course is impossible. He was good against Bayern (a team that could be in a Champions League final in a few days time), Bayern were just a bit better than us, no shame in that.
You mentioned the odd games where you thought he wasn't great but what about all the other games he played great. As for big games, the main difference between last season has been how solid we have looked. That has been mostly due to Rice and his ability to snuff out danger before it reached our penalty. Watch the City game at the Emirates for example, he was a one man wall in the midfield. City registered their least shots since Pep took over. That wasn't all down to Rice, but a lot of it was. We had the same defensive players as last season but as soon as he was introduced we went up a level defensively.
Last season we played City 3 times, lost convincingly all 3. This season we played them again 3 times, lost none. In all those games Rice was probably man of the match. He was great in the Liverpool games, Man Utd game, Chelsea games...all big games I would say.