The Kansas City Chiefs won 15 games last season, including an 11-0 record in one-score games, which sounds fake. That team was lucky time and time again. Sometimes luck is a skill, and Kansas City has the requisite experience and poise to dominate the two-minute drill every week. But a lot of it was pure luck, or just impossible to replicate.
The Super Bowl was a sign of where the Chiefs truly stand. That team is good — Super Bowl good — but they are no longer an infallible juggernaut of the highest order. Maybe the Philadelphia Eagles are, but in reality, it feels more like the Chiefs have simply returned to earth after many years soaring through the heavens.
We can point to various reasons for the Chiefs' (extremely relative) struggles, but near the top of the list is veteran tight end Travis Kelce. Last season, Kelce's 12th in the NFL, saw him produce a career-low 823 yards on 97 receptions (with the notable exception of his rookie season, in which Kelce barely touched the field).
That is still excellent production for a tight end, but it's emblematic of a clear downturn from the 35-year-old. Prior to 2023, Kelce had seven straight seasons with 1,000-plus receiving yards. He was Patrick Mahomes' favorite target. Now, with less playmaking talent around him than ever before, Kelce's production is still declining.
He explained why in an honest conversation with GQ.
Chiefs' Travis Kelce blames off-field activities for football regression
“Win a Super Bowl is the only goal,” Kelce told GQ. “It’s the only goal. It’s every goal. I think it might have slipped a little bit because I did have a little bit more focus in trying to set myself up. And opportunities came up where I was excited to venture into a new world of acting and being an entertainer. I don’t say this as ‘I shouldn’t have done it.’ I’m just saying that my work ethic is such that I have so much pride in how I do things that I never want the product to tail off, and I feel like these past two years haven’t been to my standard. I just have such a motivation to show up this year for my guys.”
This is admirably candid stuff from Kelce. Not a lot of players would say this on the record. Kelce, who appeared in the Netflix smash hit Happy Gilmore 2, co-hosts a popular podcast with his brother, and has several budding business ventures off the field, does have a lot going on. He's even dating the most famous popstar in the world.
Of course this is not Taylor Swift's fault — nor Kelce's, really. He's getting older. Most tight ends aren't putting up 1,000 yards in their mid-20s, much less thei mid-30s. But as Kelce does age, the allure of setting up his next steps in life is understandably strong. And hey, who doesn't want to be in Happy Gilmore 2?
Now comes the real challenge, though: showing up for his guys.
Can Travis Kelce balance entertainment and football for Chiefs?
Even after getting trampled in the Super Bowl, the Chiefs are odds-on favorites to win the AFC and just about even with the Eagles to win it all. Mahomes has three Super Bowl MVPs to his name. Andy Reid is one of the all-time great coaches. Folks aren't going to quit the Chiefs until this iteration of the Chiefs is fully dead.
Kelce is still a superman on the field. His size and coordination is so unique. Now we see what an apparently recommitted offseason yields on the football field. We won't see much of Kelce in preseason, but once the real games start, he still profiles as Mahomes' No. 1 target. He is certainly Mahomes' most familiar target.
Is Kelce zippier in open space? Is he muscling his way through tackles with his classic recklessness? Or is it more of what we saw last season, when Kelce looked a half-step slow across the board? Time will tell...