Training camp (over)reactions: Xavier Worthy gets bodied

Part 2 of our (over)reactions focuses on the same dang guy as last time.

As NFL training camps move forward, everyone is hanging on every single rep in camp to try and figure out what it will all mean when the season starts. With that spirit of (over)reaction in mind, I thought it’d be fun to write a few times (or more) during camp about things that catch my eye and give us all a chance to dive into the fray of training camp takes. So welcome to training camp (over)reactions, where we break down in absurd detail reps that may mean nothing… but have just enough “meat” to them to possibly mean SOMETHING.

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about Xavier Worthy having an absolutely fantastic rep against press coverage and how important it is that he show the skillset to get off the line and navigate the muck in the middle of the field. So it’s only fitting that a couple of days later he went viral on a play where he gets absolutely shellacked at the line of scrimmage.

This play unsurprisingly made waves once it hit social media, in large part because fans of opposing teams (Bills fans in particular) began sharing it en masse (undoubtedly as a way to show that trading up with the Chiefs was not a mistake). Multiple major accounts retweeted it, and it became the topic of discussion for the usual 24-to-48-hour time period that viral training camp clips tend to dominate. Comments about him looking like a pinball (he does here!) and about how speed doesn’t matter if a WR can’t get off the line (true, though lacking context!) were widely circulated… and typical internet fun was had.

I hate the idea of writing about the same player twice in a row, but this series of events actually happens to play perfectly into what we’re doing here… talking about (over)reactions to a single play, for the good or for the bad. So let’s talk about why this play potentially matters, why it (much more likely) does not, and the idea of continuing to contextualize what we see in training camp.

First of all, make no mistake, that’s a ROUGH rep for the rookie. You can see from the moment the snap starts it’s going to end badly. Because of when the video gets going you can’t QUITE get a clear video/picture of the start of the snap, but you can see that where things go wrong for him is the same place it went right for him in the last clip we discussed: The first step.

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