After briefly considering retirement, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce officially confirmed last week that he’ll be back for another NFL season.
However, one well-known NFL insider has a stark warning for Kelce about his expectations as he gears up for what could be his final year with the team.
Kelce, who is currently in a high-profile relationship with pop superstar Taylor Swift, saw a noticeable decline in his performance throughout the 2024 season, with his stats dropping across nearly every receiving category. Despite that, he expressed confidence in his ability to bounce back during a recent episode of his New Heights podcast.
He also acknowledged that he wasn’t satisfied with his play last season, particularly given how it ended—with a crushing Super Bowl LIX loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.
“I still feel like I can play at a high level and possibly at a higher level than I did last year,” Kelce said on the podcast.
“I don’t think it was my best outing, you know? I think I let my guys down in a lot more moments than I helped them, especially if you look at my track record and how I’ve been in years past. You know, I want to give it a good run.
I got a bad taste in my mouth about how I ended the year and how well I was playing, and how accountable I was for the people around me.”
Those remarks raised some concerns for NFL insider Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, who had a blunt message for Kelce. “You can’t engineer your exit,” Florio warned.
“There’s a chance that next year’s exit is going to be worse, not better. Not many guys get to say I went out with a Super Bowl game.” In fact, Florio believes Kelce could end up leaving the game under far less favorable circumstances.
“There’s a good chance that Travis Kelce is going to exit after this year with something far less than a Super Bowl loss,” Florio added.
Kelce admitted that the Super Bowl defeat left a “bad taste” in his mouth, but Florio hopes he isn’t coming back under the assumption that another trip to the big game is inevitable.
“I hope he doesn’t come back thinking ‘Alright, we’ll just go back to the Super Bowl and win it next year,’” Florio said. “No one is guaranteed the storybook finish, because it rarely happens. Even Tom Brady.”
Florio pointed out that when Brady returned from retirement for one last season in 2022, his Tampa Bay Buccaneers were eliminated in the first round by the Dallas Cowboys, marking an unceremonious end to his legendary career.
Whether Kelce and the Chiefs make another Super Bowl run remains to be seen. But as Florio warns, there’s a real possibility that he could end up regretting his decision to return.
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