Friends, we did it; we made it through the long, and at times, seemingly endless road that is the offseason. And I’ll be honest, there were times I didn’t think I would make it—let’s face it, a life without Kansas City Chiefs football is more boring than the drive from Kansas City to the Colorado border.
But as you can see from the footage captured by the captain of our ship here at Arrowhead Pride, Ron Kopp Jr., we are back, baby!
In the video, you can see quarterback Patrick Mahomes try to connect with wide receiver Xavier Worthy on a deep ball down the sideline, with cornerback Nohl Williams in coverage. Although Worthy has a step on Williams, the ball carries Worthy out of the end zone, and he’s only able to get one foot down.
That has been a theme early in his career, but with a new wide receivers coach in Chad O’Shea and a disappointing sophomore season marred by a shoulder injury, Chiefs fans are excited to see him healthy and opening it up down the field.
It’s something the team wasn’t able to work on until camp. Worthy donned a yellow non-contact jersey during OTAs earlier this summer, as he worked his way back from surgery to repair his injured shoulder this offseason.
Speaking to the media on Friday afternoon, Worthy spoke about his road back from his injury.
“Last year I was never 100%,” explained Worthy. “I was never going to be 100% until I got the surgery. So I got the surgery, been working on it, building muscle mass, obviously working at it in the offseason, getting stronger and obviously building that shoulder back.”
As for working on the deep ball with Mahomes, Worthy said that with the Chiefs star quarterback battling his own injury, it’s something they are going to continue to work on to develop their chemistry.
“Whenever we got the opportunity, you know, he was limited in OTAs. So, we tried our hardest to work at it, and we’re going to continue working on it throughout this camp.”
On Saturday, Worthy had a strong practice, catching at least two tough, downfield passes from Mahomes. After the second, Worthy reportedly left the field with a designation for his shoulder, but all signs point to the rest being closer to precautionary than worrisome.
But it’s not just Go and Post routes Worthy is working on refining; it’s his entire route tree. He explained to the media that due to his hurt shoulder, he was limited in the way he could play last season.
“Last year was kind of hard to look at [because] my routes kind of got changed,” Worthy told reporters. “I couldn’t run a lot of the things that I would normally run and couldn’t run it in the way that I would want to.”
Still, there are things that he could have done better, and that’s what he worked on this summer.
“I was kind of just looking at it as in what would I do in this situation when I was watching the film,” Worthy said. “It was a lot of things that I could have done and could have done better, and obviously I worked at it [in the] offseason.”
Worthy looks to play a pivotal role in the Chiefs’ passing game this season, but with a pre-draft frame of just 5 feet 11 inches tall and 165 pounds, durability will be a question mark that Worthy will have to continually answer until he shows he can make it through an entire 17-game season and hopefully a playoff run without suffering an injury that sidelines or limits him for multiple games.
It will be crucial that he can: Mahomes needs all the weapons he can get if Kansas City is to right the wrong that was their 6-11 season last year.
