Kansas City Chiefs running back Xavier Worthy had a thrilling debut last weekend, scoring two touchdowns in just three touches. But not everyone in the NFL was all that impressed.
Ahead of the matchup between the Chiefs and the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday, Bengals defensive back Cam Taylor-Britt seemed unconcerned about facing Worthy. The third-year cornerback told reporters on Thursday that Worthy’s main attribute was his speed, rather than his creativity.
“Speed. That’s about it,” Taylor-Britt said of what Worthy adds to the Chiefs’ offense, via WCPO’s Caleb Noe. “He can run straight. Run jet sweeps and just run straight. He can’t do too much else, so that’s about it.”
Taylor-Britt also mentioned Worthy’s size: At 5’11” and 165 pounds, Worthy is relatively small for a receiver.
“He’s only a hundred-some pounds, so if you put hands on him, you’re gonna stop his speed,” Taylor-Britt said of his plan to slow Worthy down. “So basically get your hands on him.”
Worthy, the 28th overall pick out of Texas, ran a record-setting 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine, clocking in at 4.21 seconds. The impressive speed quickly changed the conversation around Worthy ahead of the draft, before he was eventually snapped up by the defending champion Chiefs in a steal.
Worthy is unlikely to take Taylor-Britt’s comments too personally: Whittling the 21-year-old receiver down to just speed is something he prepared for after his 40-yard record.
“I feel like before the combine, if I would have run something like a 4.3, they would have been like, ‘Oh, he’s a route runner’ — but now that I run a 4.2, it’s like, ‘He’s just fast,’” Worthy told Yahoo Sports in April, a month after the Combine. “My film’s there. I ran every route in the route tree. I got open on every route, was successful at every route. The film doesn’t lie.”
Worthy got a touchdown on his first-ever NFL touch on Sunday, and got his second later in the game. Taylor-Britt had four solo tackles in Week 1.
The Chiefs and Bengals will meet in the second slate of games on Sunday, in an early matchup of two AFC heavyweights.
