Xavier Worthy doesn’t look like a guy who’s in his rookie year, that’s for sure. The Longhorns alum came out all guns blazing in the game against the Buffalo Bills scoring the game-tying touchdown in the first half of the game. However, he’s still a work in progress and we haven’t seen real production from him as far as catching deep passes is concerned.

Don’t take it from us. There are real scenarios that show that the Chiefs receiver still has a long way to go. But the Chiefs’ 3x Super Bowl-winning QB gave Worthy his flowers when he spoke to Carrington Harrison. Patrick Mahomes believes that the receiver understands the offense, and gets open, but still has issues capitalizing on long passes.

The host of The Drive on 610 Sports Radio asked Mahomes about Worthy’s 4 receptions, 61 yards, and 1 TD performance against the Bills and Mahomes was happy to give the WR his flowers.

“Yeah, I think you see his confidence. He has a better understanding for the entire offense and when he got into man type of situations, he was winning and getting himself open. He’s going to continue to keep getting better and better,” Mahomes said.

Despite Mahomes praising the QB, we can’t turn a blind eye to the fact that Worthy only caught half of the passes thrown to him this season. Including his production against the Bills, the receiver has caught only 24 of 28 passes targeted to him this season. But that’s not what we’re concerned about here. The Kansas City Chiefs have been struggling to find someone who can catch moon balls from the 3x SB winning QB and Xavier hasn’t checked that box just yet.

But there are always exceptions. Like that one time when the Chiefs went against the LA Chargers in their fourth game of the season. Mahomes threw a 54-yard pass to Worthy, and it resulted in a touchdown. The Chiefs won that game 17-10. NFLs Next Gen Stats noted something interesting about that pass.

“Patrick Mahomes’ 54-yard touchdown pass to Xavier Worthy traveled 62.2 yards in the air, Mahomes’ longest completion by air distance of his career,” an X post from Next Gen Stats noted. “Worthy reached a top speed of 21.46 mph, the 3rd-fastest play by a ball carrier this season.”

But this was just a one-time thing and there haven’t been a lot of miracles like that lately.

Patrick Mahomes-Xavier Worthy combo not there just yet

Let’s talk about his performance against the Buffalo Bills. There was a moment when Mahomes threw a deep shot and Worthy missed. Well, not missed, technically. The receiver caught the ball but couldn’t keep his feet inbounds, leading the pass to be ruled out. That’s the second time in the past three weeks that this has happened. Head coach Andy Reid wasn’t too chuffed about it when he addressed the media.

“(Xavier) Worthy will learn from the one on the sideline,” Reid told reporters after the game. “We got to take a peek at it on tape to see exactly what happened, but we were close on that one, on the deep ball.” Worthy repeated the same mistake in the game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Mahomes tried to make big plays all along, but Worthy was either too slow to catch the ball, or it was overthrown. The gist of the matter is, the QB-WR duo isn’t ready to make big plays yet. However, Mahomes is working on it because he knows he needs to make some clutch plays because the schedule just gets tougher from here. Just eight more games and we’ll see the Chiefs in the playoffs.

Coming back to the Carrington Harrison’s show, Mahomes elaborated on that incompletion that we just spoke about. The QB clarified that it was just the “first read” of the play and he thought Worthy was going to have a “free room there.” Mahomes iterated how he could have put the ball in a better spot for Worthy to find it. “More and more reps” on that type of throw should fix the issue in the future, per Mahomes.

Soon, the Chiefs will find themselves playing against the Las Vegas Raiders and it will be brutal. Not Steelers-Ravens brutal, but still. That’s the moment when Worthy will experience peak pressure. It will be exciting to see if the receiver can pull through.