Travis Kelce sure sounds like he's in denial after the Chiefs' Super Bowl beatdown

Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is at the center of the team's Super Bowl LIX loss fallout. Whether he retires is a decision that looms largely over their prospects for the 2025 NFL campaign. Meanwhile, his quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, is ostensibly preparing for him to hang up the cleats.

Regardless of Kelce's future, his perspective on the Philadelphia Eagles shellacking the Chiefs in the Super Bowl is a tad preposterous. Addressing the media from his locker following the contest, the future Hall of Famer believes this was Kansas City's worst showing of the season. While there's some truth to that statement, he declared the club reached a new low point in the Big Game, which isn't necessarily true.

"We haven’t played that bad all year," Kelce told reporters (h/t Sam Fortier of The Washington Post).

The Chiefs went 15-2 in the regular season, securing the AFC's No. 1 seed and punching their ticket to a title matchup with the Eagles. So, in fairness, Kelce is entitled to his opinion. But when digging deeper into how they got there, it's easy to see that his comment is fairly inaccurate.

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Travis Kelce sure sounds like he's in denial after the Chiefs' Super Bowl beatdown

Despite the strong win-loss record, the Chiefs had to scratch and claw their way to the top. Unlike what we've been accustomed to seeing from them in the past, they let inferior opponents hang around often. Clubs like the Carolina Panthers, Las Vegas Raiders, Denver Broncos and Atlanta Falcons were on the brink of upsetting them, though Kansas City ultimately prevailed.

Notably, the Chiefs went a whopping 12-0 in one-score games this year, an unsustainably impressive rate. Five of the mentioned victories came against Carolina, Las Vegas, Denver and Atlanta, highlighting how Kansas City was more vulnerable than usual.

Did Kelce forget it took a last-second blocked field goal attempt for the Chiefs to beat the Broncos in Week 10? What about the black magic it took for them to prevail over the Raiders in Week 13? Perhaps the game-winning doink for the Chiefs to narrowly defeat the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 14 will jog his memory.

Needless to say, the Chiefs were hanging on by a thread for much of 2024. But Kelce, Mahomes and company's greatness and experience gave them a margin for error that most squads aren't privy to. Nonetheless, Kansas City was far from a perfect product, making the legendary tight end's outlook a bit delusional.