The Kansas City Chiefs landed a perfect fit when they traded up and selected Texas wide receiver Xavier Worthy with the 28th pick in the first round of the 2024 NFL draft. The speedster seems pretty excited about joining the defending Super Bowl champs, and even got a new tattoo to commemorate his draft selection.
Worthy posted a video showing the process of getting a Chiefs logo tattooed on his arm above “R: 1, P: 28” which represents the round and position of his selection.
Rookie Xavier Worthy got some fresh ink dedicated to his new team đ¤
Worthy ran the fastest 40-yard dash at the NFL combine since 2003 when he sprinted the distance in 4.21 seconds. While he is on the smaller side at 5’11” and 165 pounds, he’s an impressive receiver. His size and skill set are eerily similar to former Chiefs star Tyreek Hill. Worthy had a great career at Texas and capped his time in college by catching 75 passes for 1,014 yards and five touchdowns as a junior in 2023.
The Chiefs’ biggest weakness last season was their receiving corps. They had seven pass catchers with three or more drops during the regular season. Kansas City’s receivers began to improve in the postseason but it was still a massive problem that needed to be addressed. This offseason the team added veteran Marquise Brown and now the rookie in Worthy to a pass catching group led by Travis Kelce and Rashee Rice. The revamped unit should keep star quarterback Patrick Mahomes happy.
Worthy and Brown’s speed should stretch defenses, opening things up underneath for Kelce and Rice. Meanwhile, the two new receivers represent the best deep threats Mahomes has had since the Chiefs traded Hill away in 2022. On paper, it looks like Kansas City’s offense got a whole lot better.
Given that he got a tattoo with his new team’s logo, Worthy seems really excited to join the Chiefs.
Five years ago, in âThe Art of Coachingâ documentary that highlighted the bond between Bill Belichick and Nick Saban, the then-Alabama coach ripped off a rant on NFL teams, and how they handled evaluating his players ahead of the draft.
âOne thing that you do, that a lot of the NFL guys donât do, I donât know that youâve ever picked one of our guys if you never talked to me before picking him,â Saban said to Belichick. âAnd thereâs a few other guys in the league that do that. But then thereâs another 30 teams that I never hear from, and then they pick somebody and Iâm saying, âThey picked that guy?â And then they say, âWell, we didnât know this.â Well, all you had to do is call and I would have told you the good stuff and I wouldâve told you any issue.â
Count the Detroit Lions as a team that listens to Saban.
Two consecutive years, theyâve come away from the NFL draft with the guy NFL folks had tabbed as the legendary coachâs favorite in the class. Last year, it was Brian Branch, who became an integral part of the Detroit defense, and a Swiss Army knife for defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn. This year, itâs Terrion Arnold, a corner the Lions never thought would be there in the 20s.
Detroit had actually laid groundwork for a trade upâI believe Missouri DE Darius Robinson was the targetâwhich made it easy to pivot and get aggressive in going up from No. 29 to No. 24 to land a falling Arnold.
For his part, Saban loved how Arnold took hard coaching, and attacked the challenge the coaches put in front of him, in sticking with him at corner rather than projecting him to safety like other schools had in recruiting him. Also, Detroit took note of how Saban played him at the âstarâ position (nickel corner), as well as outside corner. As the Lions see it, being deployed as the star at Alabama is a huge sign of trust and respect from Saban, because of the mental and physical burden he puts on that spot, and the versatility he demands from it.
Branch, for what itâs worth, played a lot there, too.
In this case, it wasnât like it had been the year before, where GM Brad Holmes personally connected with Saban (theyâd talked about Branch and Jahmyr Gibbs last year). But Detroit did have a couple of high-level staffers get to Saban on Arnold, confirming what theyâd seen. Which, in the end, made going after Arnold a no-brainer when he slipped.
⢠There are a lot of stories where a fortunate twist can play into a team drafting a certain playerâand the Chargers will have one of those from 2024 if, years from now, OT Joe Alt becomes the sort of franchise cornerstone Joe Hortiz and Jim Harbaugh think he can be.
The fact that the GM and coach were new did limit, to a degree, what they were personally able to do during this draft cycle. But the Chargers were able to get guys out on the road enough, both on the coaching and scouting side. And one such lieutenant that traveled around was veteran line coach Mike Devlin.
As luck would have it, he was assigned to run drills for the offensive line prospects at Notre Dameâs pro day in March. That allowed Devlin to challenge Alt, and to also get to know him better with the extra time heâd get with the Irish captain. Now, itâs not like there were too many revelations on the visit. Everyone knew what sort of player he was. But with the Chargers also liking Alabama RT JC Latham, the little things did make a difference.
The biggest question now is where Alt will fit on the line. All 33 of his starts at Notre Dame came at left tackle, the position Rashawn Slater plays for the Chargers. The plan is to let Alt compete for the starting right tackle spot. That said, he played tight end in high school, and wound up starting at left tackle as a true freshman at Notre Dame. So the lift might not be as heavy for Alt as it would be for others.
And thatâs what made this pick so easy for the Chargers. Alt will figure it out, and at a baseline be a really good pro with a chance to be much better, making him the rare high floor-high ceiling prospect. He has some stuff to work on such as his ability to anchor (though the Chargers would tell you to watch how, in those spots, he bends and recovers). But with the presence and intelligence he showed the Chargers in meetings, itâs a good bet that Alt will keep ascending.
The Chiefs guaranteed all $17 million of Kelce's salary for 2024.
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⢠The Chiefs did right by Travis Kelce, giving the future Hall of Famer what amounts to a plain-old raise Mondayâusually teams will require adding years to a playerâs contract in exchange, or moving money away from a future year, for giving them this sort of pay bump.
Kelceâs existing contract had a $12 million base salary for this year, with another $750,000 in per-game roster bonuses, and a $250,000 roster bonus. The Chiefs gave him another $4 million, guaranteeing all $17 million for 2023. They left his $17.25 million for 2025 intact, added a trigger thatâll guarantee most of it in March (in the form of an $11.5 million roster bonus due on the third day of the league year), and force the team to make a decision on whether to keep him at the start of free agency.
The two-year deal makes Kelce the highest paid tight end in the NFL heading into a season in which heâll turn 35. Itâs also, truth be told, not that big of a number. Heâs making less, in fact, on an APY (average per year) basis than Cleveland Browns WR Jerry Jeudy. Which is to say everything is relative, and in that sense a great tight end is a much better deal in todayâs NFL than is a good receiver.
⢠As happy as the Minnesota Vikings were to get J.J. McCarthy where they did with the 10th pick, Iâd say they were more surprised that pass rusher Dallas Turner slipped as deep into the teens as he did, which prompted the reaction from Kevin OâConnell that the teamâs in-house crew captured.
In the end, they got two guys who were projected in the top 10 in a series of trade-ups without giving up an additional first-round pick to do it. The downside? It comes in volume. They wound up with seven picks after coming in with nine, and none of those picks came on Day 2 (they had one pick between 17 and 177, and that was at 108). As it stands now, they will have only four picks next yearâtheir own first-rounder, a third-round compensatory pick for Kirk Cousins, their own fifth-rounder, and another fifth-rounder they acquired in the ZaâDarius Smith trade.
⢠With the deadline Thursday, we know that nine of the top 12 picks in the 2021 draft have had their fifth-year option picked up. The three that havenât, and wonât, are all quarterbacks who have been tradedâZach Wilson, Trey Lance and Justin Fields.
The teams that took those three certainly felt the pain of the misses, but each has recovered nicely. And throw Mac Jones in there, and you have four of five first-round quarterbacks from that yearâs class dealt, without a single Day 1 or Day 2 pick included in any of the four trades.
⢠Interestingly enough, only six of the remaining 22 first-rounders from that year have had their fifth-year options picked up.
⢠Ezekiel Elliott showed last year with the New England Patriots that he can still play. That said, the Dallas Cowboys canât run him the way they did in Elliottâs previous stint. I was pretty surprised, as such, that the Cowboys didnât use one of their eight picks on the position, though they do think highly of Rico Dowdle and Deuce Vaughn.
⢠It wasnât a huge surprise that the New York Giants punted on quarterback with Drake Maye three picks before their first-round selection at No. 6âword circulated around the NFL that New York had become a Maye-or-no-QB team over the couple of weeks leading up to the draft. And since they did offer their 2025 first-rounder to get to No. 3, you can see New York saw a gap between the top three and the next three in the class.
⢠As for how the teams had the guys ranked, the Vikings really dove in on the guys after the top two, and had Maye (for whom they offered 11, 23 and a 2025 first-rounder, with pick swaps favoring them bringing some value back), then McCarthy. The Falcons had Michael Penix Jr. behind Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels (with a few folks in their building personally having Penix second). And Denver had Nix behind only Williams and Daniels.
Latu could be a huge get for the Colts if his neck in healthy.
Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
⢠I can appreciate the video of Colts GM Chris Ballard saying the Indianapolis Colts got the draftâs best pass rusher in Laiatu Latu. Most people, maybe all, I talked to about the UCLA star before the draft told me his tape was the best among the pass rushers. But thatâs not the question with Latu; itâs the condition of his nick. But if heâs healthy? Paired with DeForest Buckner in that front, look out.
Like all dynasties in sports, the Kansas City Chiefs began their run of dominance as fan-favorite underdogs.
But after three Super Bowl titles in the last five years, the Chiefsâand especially quarterback Patrick Mahomes himselfâare viewed outside of Kansas City as the league's new villains.
On a recent appearance on the Impaulsive podcast, Mahomes recalled the moment that he realized this was the case.
"This year, definitely, was the more villain-type role for the whole team," Mahomes said. "I don't think I really realized itâI heard people talking and obviously social media, there's people always talkingâso I didn't know how real it was until I got to Buffalo this year."
The Chiefs and Buffalo Bills have developed a heated rivalry over the last few seasons. Kansas City has ended Buffalo's season in the playoffs in three of the last four years, including a 27â24 victory in the divisional round at Highmark Stadium in January.
"I think I saw 40,000 middle fingers on the way into the stadium," Mahomes said. "They were ready to go. We go out there and win, I'm trying to hand my headband and sleeve off to a kid, and snowballs are just flying at me.
"I'm just like, 'These people really don't like me.' It's not fake at all. I think they have a great fan base."
The Chiefs are scheduled to face the Bills at Highmark Stadium once again during the 2024 regular season.
Buffalo and its loyal fan base will look for revenge against Mahomes, the NFL's current best quarterback and apparently greatest villain.
The entire AFC is chasing the Kansas City Chiefs. Last week, some teams closed the gap during the 2024 NFL draft. Others saw it only grow wider.
But which teams did the best? Which added the most potential while also finding immediate starters? And, conversely, who failed to find enough help, making them vulnerable?
We analyzed and ranked all 16 of the AFC draft classes, going from least-inspiring to most.
16. Tennessee Titans
Tennessee did a nice job picking up OT JC Latham in the first round to bolster its offensive line, but the rest of the draft was underwhelming. The Titans gambled big on DT TâVondre Sweat despite his off-field concerns, and then selected three linebackers as the rounds clicked off. Not enough upside.
15. Buffalo Bills
The Bills traded back twice in the first round before ultimately selecting WR Keon Coleman with the first pick of the second round. Buffalo then decided to pass on a litany of other talented wideouts, instead loading up on the offensive line with four picks. The Day 2 choices of S Cole Bishop and DT DeWayne Carter were their best.
14. Jacksonville Jaguars
With a big need at cornerback, the Jaguars chose to select Thomas with their first pick.
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Jacksonville had the opportunity to draft any corner in the draft, but traded back to hoard picks. Fair enough. However, the Jaguars then took WR Brian Thomas Jr. instead of addressing a major need. Afterwards, Jacksonville took a kicker and a reserve running back, passing on more high-upside talent. Not awful, but not great.
13. Cleveland Browns
The Browns were once again without their first-round pick as a result of the disastrous Deshaun Watson deal, which gets hilariously worse by the year. Clevelandâs first pick came Friday, when it took a high-upside defensive end in Michael Hall Jr. despite his lack of statistics at Ohio State. Down the board, the Browns finished the draft with three defensive players, hoping to find depth.
12. Denver Broncos
If Bo Nix turns out to be a quality quarterback, my team grade is going to look silly. If heâs not, the Broncos are going to be spinning their wheels for the next few years. The Broncos were also without a second-round pick before taking edge rusher Jonah Elliss and receiver Troy Franklin in the middle rounds. Not a bad haul, but everything hinges on the 24-year-old quarterback.
11. Miami Dolphins
The Dolphins decided to go for an edge rusher in the first round, selecting Penn Stateâs Chop Robinson to bolster depth after injuries to Bradley Chubb and Jaelen Phillips. In the second round, general manager Chris Grier took Miamiâs future left tackle in Patrick Paul, a three-year starter at Houston. On Day 3, the Dolphins took another running back in Jaylen Wright. An intriguing class.
10. Houston Texans
The Texans didnât have a first-round pick after trading back with the Minnesota Vikings, but they still had a nice haul. Houston got a pair of defensive backs on Day 2 with CB Kamari Lassiter and S Calen Bullock, before getting great value in Ohio State TE Cade Stover. Ultimately, Houston added a few potential starters plus depth.
9. Cincinnati Bengals
Cincinnati loaded up in the trenches, while also taking a pair of boom-or-bust SEC prospects. The Bengals used three of their first four picks on offensive and defensive linemen, including Georgiaâs Amarius Mims in the first round. Mims is incredibly talented, but only started eight games for the Bulldogs. In the third round, Cincinnati gambled on WR Jermaine Burton, who has great film but character-driven red flags.
8. New York Jets
Protecting Aaron Rodgers was the top priority for the Jets, who picked Fashanu in the first round.
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The Jets started strong by taking OT Olu Fashanu to lock down the left side for years to come. However, after not having a pick in the second round due to the Aaron Rodgers trade, New York took a pair of running backs. The Jets also took WR Malachi Corley, a 215-pounder who can create yards after the catch. It was an offensively driven class with upside.
7. Kansas City Chiefs
The Chiefs hit on their two biggest needs in the first two rounds, trading up for WR Xavier Worthy and OT Kingsley Suamataia. On Day 3, Kansas City found quality value in S Jaden Hicks and CB Kamal Hadden, upgrading an already strong secondary despite the loss of LâJarius Sneed in a trade with the Titans.
6. Baltimore Ravens
Baltimore made an already strong roster even better, utilizing all three days of the draft. After getting good value at No. 30 with CB Nate Wiggins, the Ravens continued to take ready-made contributors in edge rusher Adisa Isaac, OT Roger Rosengarten and WR Devontez Walker, along with an intriguing talent in CB TJ Tampa.
5. Indianapolis Colts
The Colts understood their assignment going into the draft. They had to make second-year quarterback Anthony Richardson comfortable, and that appears to have been achieved. GM Chris Ballard landed receivers Adonai Mitchell and Anthony Gould along with a pair of mid-round offensive linemen. Indianapolis also added to its pass rush with edge Laiatu Latu, a potential star off the edge.
4. New England Patriots
The Patriots drafted a pair of receivers after selecting Maye with the third pick in the first round.
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New England did exactly what it needed to in the draft. The Patriots resisted the temptation to trade back and took Drake Maye as their next franchise quarterback. Then they spent the rest of the draft surrounding him with an improved offense ranging from receivers JaâLynn Polk and Javon Baker, to a pair of offensive linemen in Caeden Wallace and Layden Robinson.
3. Las Vegas Raiders
The Raiders were patient, and that paid off. Instead of trading up into the top 10 for a quarterback, veteran GM Tom Telesco stayed at No. 13 and tabbed TE Brock Bowers. On the second day, Telesco upgraded the offensive front with G Jackson Powers-Johnson and OT Delmar Glaze out of Maryland. The Raiders still need a quarterback, but when they find him, heâll be in a better spot.
2. Los Angeles Chargers
The Chargers needed to find talent across the board in this class after losing receivers Keenan Allen and Mike Williams, among others. To that end, Los Angeles nabbed Notre Dame OT Joe Alt at No. 5 before trading up for WR Ladd McConkey in the second round. On Day 3, the choices of CB Cam Hart and WR Brenden Rice represent great value.
1. Pittsburgh Steelers
Fautanu will likely start at tackle for the Steelers.
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Nobody in either conference had a better draft than GM Omar Khan and the Steelers. Pittsburgh found a litany of offensive linemen who could start soon between OT Troy Fautanu, C Zach Frazier and G Mason McCormick. Then thereâs the third-round choices of WR Roman Wilson and LB Payton Wilson, both excellent values. Home run stuff from Pittsburgh.