The Kansas City Chiefs had a roller-coaster game, and that was especially true for their wide receivers.
The group’s peak performance came from a duo of speedsters: wide receivers Xavier Worthy and Tyquan Thornton combined for 181 receiving yards on nine catches. Worthy fought off tight coverage to secure a jump-ball pass for 41 yards, while Thornton caught passes for 41 and 55 yards along with two red-zone touchdowns.
Unfortunately, the dips were extreme: Thornton suffered a serious ankle injury at the conclusion
of the 55-yard bomb in the fourth quarter. That came after wide receiver Rashee Rice (hamstring) left the game in the first quarter after coming up limp after a catch-and-run.
Thornton’s injury unfairly overshadows what can be considered his career-best performance. Thornton scored on third-and-goal to open the scoring, then caught a beautiful pass down the left sideline from quarterback Patrick Mahomes in the two-minute drill before halftime.
To start the fourth quarter, Thornton caught another great throw from Mahomes, this time off a well-executed shoulder fake in the red zone. If his day wasn’t already heroic enough, he made arguably the most important play of the entire game seconds before suffering a brutal injury.
While Thronton’s heroic effort unfortunately became sacrificial, it was immediately followed up by two touchdown runs from running back Ken Walker, the two deciding scores of the game. Walker acknowledged some motivation stemming from an awful moment for his teammate during his post-game press conference.
“You never want to see that happen to anybody,” Walker began. “It’s kind of motivating in a sense where you have to play for your brother that much harder.”
Walker was heroic himself; he finished with 177 rushing yards — and 76 of them came on a game-changing play at the end of the third quarter. An off-tackle run to the right produced a massive hole, and Walker wasted no time bursting through it into the third level of Las Vegas’ defense. He flew down the sideline for the longest run by any Chiefs player in seven years.
He broke through after a first half that offered less open space for Kansas City’s offense. Walker was stuffed on a fourth-and-short run in the first quarter, ending an opening drive where the Chiefs failed on third down twice.
The team kept handing off to Walker, who finished with 22 carries, and that commitment was crucial to the Chiefs’ pass catchers having one-on-one opportunities downfield.
On Worthy’s big play, Mahomes purposefully put air under the ball, valuing the chance for Worthy to strong-arm a defensive back for the completion rather than potentially overshooting a deeper pass on the run.
“The one early to Xavier, I probably could have tried to throw it further,” Mahomes recalled. “But I was just trying to give him a chance to make a play versus another cover zero-type look, and he went up and made a big play.
“It doesn’t always have to be perfect thrown by me,” Mahomes noted. ”It’s about giving guys chances to make plays.”
Worthy could see the play coming and knew his quarterback would give him the chance to complete the explosive play.
“Everybody blitzed,” Worthy recalled at the podium. “I knew Pat was going to put it up and we went up and made a play.”
Whether it was Thornton, Walker, Worthy, or any of the other nine Chiefs who touched the ball on offense, it was an outstanding performance by Mahomes’ supporting cast in Las Vegas.
