Anatomy of a Play: Xavier Worthy's Long Touchdown in the Super Bowl
As we trek through the slower months of football, let’s begin looking back some important plays from the Kansas City Chiefs’ 2024 season. Whether it stands out in a positive way and is something that should be built upon, or in a negative way and is a sign of why things ended the way they did for the Chiefs, nothing is off the table.
With that in mind for this first week let’s focus on the most pivotal talking point for the Chiefs’ coming out of the 2024 season: the lack of dynamic offensive plays. We are going to start with the very last game of the season, the Super Bowl. While an overall negative game for the Chiefs, there was a play late in the game that at least provides some optimism moving forward.
If it’s not obvious, we are talking about Xavier Worthy’s second Touchdown of the game on a 50 yard pass from Patrick Mahomes. This was tied for the Chiefs’ second longest play of the year — along with a Juju Smith-Schuster catch and run, just behind Worthy’s Touchdown vs the Chargers’ in Week 4 — and showcases the potential the vertical passing game has as well as some of the flaws.
Anatomy of a Play: The Long Touchdown
The Overview
This is a mirrored concept with the Chiefs’ running essentially the same concept to either side of the field with a Deep Over/Post from the slot receiver. To the backside of the formation — the single receiver side — Hollywood Brown is running a Curl route but it’s designed to run directly at the backside safety to “collect” him and hold him low on the field. This is supposed to open up the deep pass downfield for the slot receiver to the strength of the formation — Worthy in this case — to run a Deep Over/Post over the top.
Further to the outside of the strength of the formation, Travis Kelce runs a Dig route underneath the Deep Over/Post creating a Dagger concept. Noah Grey and Samaje Perine are both tasked with chipping pass rushers on the edge and then releasing into the flats. The concept is designed to stretch the defense vertically on the weakside of the formation on all three levels.
