Given Rashee Rice’s off-field issues, I would expect some Kansas City receiver will dramatically outperform where he’s selected in drafts. Xavier Worthy, I think, looks most likely to be that guy.

KC also signed Hollywood Brown, who’s a similar receiver in some ways. Both are undersized and fast, and both were selected in the back half of the first round. Brown is the more experienced of the two. But I’d be more inclined to select Worthy, whom the team traded up to select in April.

I gave Worthy the deep dive treatment. The same as I did with Ricky Pearsall yesterday, viewing all of his targets from the 2023 season. (They’re all available on YouTube.) When moving beyond looking at just the stats and the highlight catches, it allows for a better feel of what the player’s all about – how they used him in college, and how he might fit in as a pro.

The size is a negative. He measured 5-foot-11 and 165 pounds at the combine. But he doesn’t seem quite that small to me. I saw many plays where he played physically, trying to break tackles. He tried to run over a defensive back at the goal line in the Oklahoma State game. He’s a football player rather than a track guy that coaches are trying to harness. I see Kyler Murray and Bryce Young, and it worries me – they look like they’re too small to play the position. With Worthy, he doesn’t look much different to me than the many 180-pounders at the position.

Coming into this endeavor, I was expecting Worthy to project more similarly to DeSean Jackson (whom Andy Reid had success with in Philadelphia). But they’re not really the same kind of player. Jackson is a deep threat. With Worthy, he was more effective on short catches around the line of scrimmage.

Worthy, in fact, was surprisingly modest as a deep threat (considering he ran 4.21 at the combine). I logged 21 pass attempts last year where the ball showed up with Worthy at least 20 yards downfield. He caught only 6 of those passes, and with just one touchdown. On 7 of those 21 attempts, I put in my notes that he was well covered. In the national semifinal against Washington, for example, there was a 46-yard bomb down the sideline, but he was covered by Jabbar Muhammad (who’ll likely be a first-round pick), who had him comfortable pinned against the sideline.

I charted 4 other plays (of those 21) where Worthy was open but the throw wasn’t there. But it’s tough for him to complain about quarterbacking, with him working for most of the year with a quarterback who’ll be a first- or second-round pick. (Note: Quinn Ewers missed two games, with erratic Maalik Murphy filling in – I’ve got the Murphy games in bold in the supporting documentation).

There were two potential long plays where I was wondering if Worthy should have made more of an effort to get to the ball. One against Alabama where the coverage was good, but he perhaps could have tried to draw an interference penalty by getting through the safety. And one on a towards the end zone that seemed to be only slightly overthrown. On both of those plays, he seemed to pull up.

I charted Ricky Pearsall yesterday. With lesser quarterbacking, he posted much better deep ball numbers than Worthy last year. Both saw 21 such attempts, with Pearsall catching 5 more passes for 106 more yards and 3 more touchdowns. (Admittedly, Pearsall’s numbers weren’t as carefully logged – on his spreadsheet, I hadn’t defined “long” attempts as being at least 20 yards downfield.)

Rather than on deep balls, Worthy was more effective when they just got the ball in his hands and let him work. He consistently makes people miss, picking up extra yards. I counted 28 passes where he caught the ball behind the line of scrimmage, and he picked up 210 yards on those. That’s 7.5 yards per catch (over 10 if we instead look at yards from where he caught the ball).

On short-range catches (under 10 yards) Worthy caught 27 passes for 313 yards. He averaged over twice as many yards on those catches as Pearsall did at Florida. But on only 2 of those 55 short catches did he turn them into touchdowns. (Against Wyoming, he caught a quick one outside, behind the line of scrimmage, turning it into a 44-yard touchdown; against Texas Tech, he caught a 9-yard pass and through a combination of moves and power was able to gain another 10 yards to get to the end zone.) Worthy also turned a short catch into a non-scoring 53-yard play against Oklahoma State.

On medium-range passes (with the ball caught 10-19 yards downfield) the Longhorns went 16 of 25 passing to Worthy last year, for 310 yards, with a couple of touchdowns. There was another play in there that turned into a 57-yard touchdown after a cool turn on the sideline (against Josh Newton, who was selected in the fifth round by Cincinnati), but the play was changed to a 20-yard gain after replay showed his little toe out of bounds – he’s definitely dangerous.

With his after-the-catch ability, I would think KC will look to use Worthy like they’ve used Kadarius Toney at times the last season and a half. (Hopefully he’s better than Toney at creating after those touches). While Worthy will run some deep routes, I don’t think they’ll use him like they’ve used Marquez Valdes-Scantling at times (with the outside vertical routes behind about all he does).

Worthy isn’t a contested ball catcher. He’s small, and with small hands. He’s not one of those guys who has a knack for coming up with the ball in traffic. But the hands seem to be just fine. I charted only one true drop. Unfortunately, it came at about the worst time. On third-and-goal from the 4-yard line against Alabama, a crossing route allowed him to get well open away from Kool-Aid McKinstry (1st-round pick), but he dropped it. And there were 3 other plays where he maybe should have caught throws that were off target.

Oddly, neither Worthy nor Pearsall (despite being first-round picks) caught a touchdown under 10 yards last year. Neither was heavily used around the goal line, and neither was effective in that part of the field last year.

In the chart below, the stats aren’t official but instead come from what I jotted down from the TV copy on YouTube. I’m sure the yards are off by a yard or two on many catches. I broke them down based on where he caught the ball, with BLOS (behind line of scrimmage), short (0-9 yards), medium (10-19 yards) and long (20-plus yards). YAC = not yards after contact but “yards after catch” – once the ball hits his hands, you start counting.

Below (in chronological order) is my play-by-play breakdown on Worthy. He had a couple of 16-yard runs. I left those plays out. He also had a couple of pass attempts, which I omitted. (I would guess he’ll throw a pass at some point this year – KC has had 5 pass attempts by non-quarterbacks in the last five years.) Plays you may be interested in looking at I’ve got tagged with black dots. Texas played two games without Quinn Ewers, and I’ve got them in bold. (Maalik Murphy went only 9 of 22 throwing to Worthy last year, for 150 yards; Ewers completed 70 percent when throwing to Worthy.)

—Ian Allan