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Chiefs headlines for Wednesday, May 14
Answering big questions on second-year NFL wide receivers | ESPN
Was the Super Bowl an omen for Xavier Worthy?
In the first half of the 2024 season, the Chiefs were trying to use Worthy as a downfield receiver, and it was not working. Through Weeks 1-12, Worthy averaged 11.9 air yards per target and was catching only 51.9% of his passes. Kansas City’s first-rounder struggled to find the football in the air and catch through contact.
Necessity became the mother of invention, and as the Chiefs’ running game plummeted in effectiveness, they began using Worthy as an underneath target and even a ball carrier on reverses and jet sweeps to create some easy explosives while also moving the sticks. Worthy’s depth of target tumbled; from Week 13 through the conference championship game, his air yards per target was 5.5 — less than half his previous figure — and his catch rate accordingly rose to 73.7%. Worthy also had 11 carries in the first 12 weeks of the season, then 12 in the final seven. (Worthy finished the regular season with 638 receiving yards and six TD catches.)
Entering the Super Bowl, the Worthy role felt clear: screens, sweeps, reverses and shallow crosses. Get the ball into his hands and use his acceleration — not his deep speed — as an asset to break defenders’ tackle angles and create first downs.
Assuming Rashee Rice returns to the starting lineup after his knee injury and reclaims his demand of shallow and intermediate targets — where he was at his best in 2023 and 2024 — then Worthy will suddenly need to deliver on his downfield promise. It’s easy to forget because of the happy note he landed on, but Worthy’s minus-9.6% catch rate above expectation was the worst number among all receivers during the 2024 regular season (per NFL Next Gen Stats). He was not making big grabs for much of the year, and he has to pick up where he left off in New Orleans.
NFL top-10 rankings: Commanders ahead of Chiefs ... but can either catch Eagles? | FOX Sports
4. Kansas City Chiefs: As long as No. 15 steps onto the field, the Chiefs are a contender. Patrick Mahomes, a two-time MVP, will need to uplift an offense with a fading No. 1 option (Travis Kelce) and a collection of inconsistent (Marquise “Hollywood” Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster) and unproven (Xavier Worthy, and Jalen Royals) playmakers on the perimeter. It will be crucial for those pass-catchers to step up as Rashee Rice tries to recover from the torn ACL he suffered in Week 4 last season. With Rice’s status up in the air, a rebuilt offensive line in front of Mahomes and fewer blue-chip players in place, the Chiefs could quickly drop down this list once the season kicks off in September.
Takeaways from 2025 NFL schedule news | Yardbarker
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