Xavier Worthy has 1,170 receiving yards and 7 touchdowns on his NFL resume, production that the fantasy football community thought would more align with where he stood after one season, not two, but here we are.
The speed has yet to be truly unlocked (12.7 yards per catch with zero career catches of 55+ yards), but the offense remains intact and his role isn’t going anywhere. Is now the time to pounce with his ADP resting outside of the top 100 players?
Should You Draft Xavier Worthy in Fantasy Football?The industry got ahead of itself projecting that Worthy’s combine speed would translate automatically into fantasy production, and two years into his career, the gap between his ceiling and his actual output is still wide. Defenses have spent years scheming to take the deep ball away from Patrick Mahomes and that’s forced Worthy to operate away from the one trait that made him a first-round pick.
That could be a lose-the-battle, win-the-war situation if it eventually pushes him to round out his route tree, but the results to date are rough to date.
In full PPR scoring, Worthy has just three 20-point games to his name and he has twice as many outings under five points. Earning targets in bulk has been the bigger issue, with eight or more targets in only 25.8% of his career games, and that volume problem caps his weekly appeal even with a Hall of Fame quarterback throwing to him.
None of that means the profile is finished. Worthy was clearly schemed to be a featured piece of Kansas City’s passing game in last season’s opener before a shoulder injury on the third snap knocked him out and cost him the next two games.
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When he returned, the belief in the role didn’t disappear even if the numbers stayed uneven. Reporting this spring indicated the coaching staff intentionally limited his workload for the rest of the season to protect the shoulder rather than write him off, which lines up with a coach who still values the tools even when the box score didn’t cooperate.
Production came and went through a bumpy second season, but the belief at the top hasn’t gone anywhere. As long as Andy Reid keeps building around this skill set, Worthy stays in the buy-low conversation instead of the cut list, espcially given the recovery of his QB from the ACL tear.
Worthy’s Dynasty Fantasy Football ValueWorthy is still only 23 and he’s catching passes from arguably the best quarterback in the league. That combination alone keeps his dynasty market from bottoming out completely, even after two seasons that have underwhelmed in a major way.
The bet isn’t that Worthy becomes a weekly-reliable WR2 you can trust. It never was.
At this price, however, you don’t need that outcome to make the buy worthwhile. If he tops out as a solid field-stretcher rather than a featured option, that’s not a big loss given what you’re paying to get him and there is still the potential that he develops into more than that.
What you’re buying is the age curve. Nobody is a finished product at 23, and in dynasty formats even more than redraft ones, buying the dip on a player who likely has better football ahead of him is close to the entire point of the format.
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Kansas City still isn’t deep at receiver beyond Rashee Rice, and that lack of competition gives Worthy a path to more usage sooner rather than later if his health holds.
Risk is part of life and when the upside outweighs the downside, you make that call every time and live with the results.
This article originally appeared on Pro Football Network.
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