Xavier Worthy Camp Update — August 31: The Hit Question Reaches Week One

The last chance came and went. Xavier Worthy did not play Friday's finale — the team recap of a nine-to-nine tie that Garrett Nussmeier quarterbacked wire to wire never mentions him, per Matt McMullen at Chiefs.com, after the Associated Press preview had Andy Reid declining to say whether he and Rashee Rice would suit up. That closes the preseason at zero snaps and zero live contact, and it means the question we have carried since June — can he take a hit — goes to the opener against Denver untested.

One detail from the week does move the reading, though. When Worthy sat the Tampa game, a shoulder sprain was the stated reason, per Joshua Schulman at Sports Illustrated's Chiefs site. Reid's only public grouping of him this week, on Wednesday, per Charles Goldman at A to Z Sports, put him with Rice, L'Jarius Sneed and Drue Tranquill — veterans who sat the second preseason game and would likely sit the third — with no mention of the shoulder at all. Last week we drew two readings of his summer: the generous one, that his sitting is the same generic caution every healthy starter gets, and the stricter one, that the reporting named the shoulder specifically. This week's reporting did not name the shoulder. That is evidence toward the generous reading — not proof, because the absence of a mention is not a clearance, and no shoulder-specific reporting appeared in either direction all week. No practice-participation reporting on him surfaced either.

At the cutdown he made the initial 53 among six receivers, with no designation, per McMullen and per Marleah Campbell at KCTV5. The June frame stands exactly where it stood: the rookie season was the player, the second season was the injury, and the bounce-back cannot be underwritten until he proves he can absorb contact — proof that is now impossible to collect until the games count. The next look comes when the real games do.

_Data via nflverse._