The resume looks far from impressive for rookie wide receiver Xavier Loyd — one of three tryout players signed from the weekend’s rookie minicamp that the Kansas City Chiefs hosted this weekend.
Loyd played locally at Blue Springs High School, then attended Kansas State in 2022 and 2023, and Missouri for the 2025 season. He was listed at 6 feet 2 inches tall and 196 pounds on the Chiefs’ rookie camp roster.
He totaled just three catches for 37 yards over his time at the local universities, and entered
the 2026 NFL Draft with Dane Brugler of The Athletic ranking him as the 211th best wide receiver in his draft guide ‘The Beast.” Brugler also uncharacteristically misspelled his name as “Xaiver.”
In between three unproductive college seasons, however, lies the potential the Chiefs likely saw when the front office invited Loyd to try out. He spent 2024 with a Championship Subdivision-level football program at Illinois State. In his only season with the Redbirds, Loyd totaled 66 catches for 912 yards and six touchdowns.
While Loyd undoubtedly would have liked to have made a bigger impact at the highest level of college football, he made the most of his chance with the Chiefs. Precious little has been reported of the team’s rookie camp due to the confidentiality rules Chiefs’ beat reporters operate under. One consistent media take, however, has been that Loyd had a great camp.
On Saturday, team reporter Matt McMullen highlighted Loyd as one of the most impressive tryout players.
After his signing became official, Jesse Newell of The Athletic reported, via X, “Loyd was the standout of our two days at rookie practices. Mizzou player and Blue Springs kid will get a longer look now.”
On the latest episode of his podcast “41 is the Mic,” Nick Jacobs of KSHB 41 said this of Loyd’s weekend:
“The one we kept talking about all weekend, obviously, is Xavier Loyd who was trying out. He made a lot of catches on Saturday and tried to make the most of his reps. Some of the tough throws they made, he was willing to leap and try to make a play on it.”
Although he has officially joined the team, Loyd continues to face an uphill climb. It is far from certain he will show enough in the next few weeks for the Chiefs to even keep him on the roster for training camp. As the team transitions to organized-team-activities (OTAs) later this month, Loyd will need to show what he can do against experienced NFL defenders — as opposed to the fellow rookies he stood out against to earn a contract in Kansas City.
After last season’s rookie camp, the Chiefs signed tryout linebacker Cooper McDonald and wide receiver Jimmy Holiday to 90-man roster contracts. Like Loyd, McDonald and Holiday each bounced between three different college programs.
McDonald would go on to appear in all 17 games and now appears to have the inside track on taking on some of the rotational defensive snaps vacated by Leo Chenal’s free agency departure to the Washington Commanders.
Holiday would spend most of the season on Kansas City’s practice squad before suiting up for the season finale.
The odds are against any undrafted free agent, let alone tryout hopefuls. The Chiefs have shown, however, that they will give players like Loyd, who may have fallen through the cracks of college football, a fair evaluation.
