Chiefs find yet another X factor

Xavier Worthy beat the clock in February and, in his NFL debut, helped the champs squeak past Baltimore on Thursday.

Xavier Worthy

John Ross was a graduate of Snoop Dogg’s youth football program. He also graduated from Long Beach’s Jordan High and played wide-out at the U. of Washington. He had a torn labrum in his shoulder when it came time to strip-and-rip for the scouts at the Draft Combine, but he kept that news to himself, at least until he was called upon to run the 40.

Ross knew the power of a first impression. He did the 40 in 4.22 seconds, fastest in Combine annals, and then pulled up with a bad calf.  The gain was worth the pain, at least for a while. Cincinnati took Ross with the ninth pick of the first round in 2017. The 10th pick? The quarterback from Texas Tech, to Kansas City. Give me a minute and I’ll come up with his name.

Ross had shoulder surgery after that draft, fumbled away his first and only touch of that rookie season, and was out of Cincinnati after four years of 11 touchdowns and 62 catches. He announced his retirement, then rescinded it, then spent most of training camp with the Eagles this year and was released. The scouts’ infatuation with top-end speed did not fade, but Ross became a cautionary tale. The subtleties of the position are too important, and the demand for health too strong, to draft on the basis of the stopwatch alone. You need MPG, not just MPH.

Seven years later Xavier Worthy showed up at the Combine after a rich season at Texas. He had already captured the eyes of the scouts. They watched Worthy burn up the track with a time of 4.21, beating the record. But that only led to more concentric questions. Could Worthy hold up, at 5-foot-11 and 165? Could he find a niche of his own, or was he just the product of Steve Sarkisian’s resourceful system? Would he turn out to be the next Tyreek Hill or the next John Ross?

The Chiefs figured those questions were moot. They weren’t thrilled by Worthy’s time because it apparently meant he wouldn’t last until the end of the first round, where Super Bowl champions pick. But then Buffalo wanted to take the plunge and accumulate picks, even though it had lost receiver Stefon Diggs. Kansas City moved to Buffalo’s 28th spot, and Worthy was still sitting there when their time came, like a hanging slider. Judging from the NFL opener Thursday night in Kansas City, the Chiefs did not miss it.

In the first quarter, Worthy took an end-around handoff from Patrick Mahomes — there, I knew his name would come to me — and was suddenly standing in the end zone, like Gene Wilder’s quick-draw skills as the Waco Kid. It was a 21-yard touchdown that canceled out Baltimore’s impressive opening drive. It also was the first time Worthy had touched the football in an NFL game.

In the fourth quarter, Worthy drifted toward the sideline and took Mahomes’ pass, and he got past Marlon Humphrey and suddenly had an empty racetrack ahead. That was a 35-yard touchdown that put Kansas City ahead, 27-17.

But it did not end there. Baltimore got within 27-20 and then Lamar Jackson got the ball with 1:50 left, although he lacked time outs. He had 87 yards to negotiate. He did have tight end Isaiah Likely on his side, and Likely caught three of Jackson’s passes and got out of bounds each time. Jackson then made his longest connection of the game, a 38-yarder to Rashad Bateman that got Baltimore to the Kansas City ten.

Jackson tried to find Likely in the corner of the end zone, but Bryan Cook broke up the play and also broke up Likely, leaving the tight end down as the Ravens’ medical team converged. Likely rose from his pain and got to the sidelines. A couple of plays later he was back in the fray, and Mahomes drilled him with a 10-yarder on the final play of regulation. Touchdown, right? Coach John Harbaugh thought so. He immediately signaled that he wanted a two-point try, to win or lose right then. He was prohibited from that adventure, or misadventure, when it became clear that Likely’s big toe was on the end line, reminiscent of Kevin Durant’s bigfoot 3-pointer that was disallowed at the end of a Milwaukee-Brooklyn playoff game.

The Chiefs thus bagged a 27-20 win that fortified their big-game reputation, but Jackson also reinforced his lust for The Moment. If this sets up a collision course for an AFC Championship Game, four months hence, we’ll make an appointment.

Worthy thus became the first player since 1987 to score 20-yard touchdowns via the run and the pass in his debut NFL game. The first was James Brim of the Vikings, and he was a replacement player during a work stoppage. Worthy also became the first Chief rookie to score two touchdowns in his maiden game, duplicating the work of Kareem Hunt seven years ago.

Worthy’s jet sweep came to life from the doodling notepad of coach Andy Reid, who never sleeps without a pen nearby, even on vacation. You never know what an idea will hit you, even on a Kauai patio. Worthy was lined up to the left, and Mahomes faked a handoff to Isiah Pacheco, running left, before handing it to Worthy. Virtually the entire offensive line had pulled to block right, with Joe Thuney and rookie Kingsley Suamataia leading the parade and with Jason Kelce pitching in. But Worthy took the play to a different plane when he spotted a cutback opportunity and floored it. A probable 15-yard gain became six points. That is what Kansas City has been missing since it traded Hill to Miami, although it managed to win the past two Super Bowls anyway.

“You know you’re going to get shell coverage,” Mahomes said, “so just having him out there opens up stuff. It’s getting guys like Travis and Rashee (Rice, who caught seven passes for 103 yards) open underneath. So when we get Hollywood Brown (injured) out there, too, it’s going to be tough for defenses to decide who they want to cover.”

Worthy suggested to offensive coordinator Matt Nagy that the end-around would work for a touchdown, even though he had fumbled a chance away when the Chiefs called it in an exhibition. “It was bad, but they had trust in me,” Worthy said.

The Chiefs built that trust on research. Nagy used to be Chicago’s head coach. One of his assistants, Chris Jackson, was Worthy’s position coach at Texas, so Nagy knew how Worthy practiced and studied tape. Nagy, general manager Brett Veach and receiver coach Connor Embree had various jobs in Philadelphia when the Eagles got DeSean Jackson, one of the best deep threats of his time (and now a volunteer assistant coach at Long Beach’s Wilson High). Reid was in charge of all that. That’s why the Chiefs always envisioned Worthy as a descendant of Jackson, not Hill.

Worthy was not always an easy sell. Going into his senior year at Fresno’s Central High, he had one scholarship offer, from San Jose State. He fixed that with a season that brought calls from championship contenders, and he picked Michigan over Texas, but a strange problem with the admissions department set Worthy free.

Impressed with Sarkisian, Worthy became a Longhorn, and caught 261 yards of passes against Oklahoma as a freshman. A broken hand that neither Worthy nor Sarkisian would acknowledge caused a rough, drop-heavy sophomore season, but he was a 1.000-yard receiver as Texas reached the College Football Playoff last year.

Giving the Chiefs someone like Worthy is like giving Robert Kennedy Jr. the keys to the zoo. The NFL might have a salary cap, but there is no touchdown cap, no legislation that limits the number of lethal playmakers. Maybe the player who breaks Worthy’s combine record will get drafted higher, provided Worthy fulfills what he showed on Thursday. At the very least, Worthy and John Ross have demonstrated the same thing in different ways: Those 40 yards in February are only the first steps.

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