Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has started the 2024 season slower than what fans would have expected going into the year.
After a ninth Pro Bowl season, Kelce has only gotten seven targets and has four catches for 39 yards. He only had one catch for five yards in the Chiefs’ win over the Cincinnati Bengals this past weekend.
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Kelce was hurt in the first game of the 2023 season. When he finally got on the field, he had four catches on nine targets for 26 yards. He had a touchdown. In his second game, he had seven catches on eight targets for 69 yards and also had one touchdown.
The 34-year-old star player, who is nearing his 35th birthday, is looking exactly like that – a 35-year-old football player.
But is there something else to blame? ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith seemed to think so. He invoked Taylor Swift when talking about Kelce’s performance on Monday’s "First Take."
"I love my brother from another in Travis Kelce, but we saw more of Taylor Swift than we saw of Travis Kelce yesterday, on a Sunday afternoon," Smith said. "That wasn’t supposed to happen. We were supposed to see more of Travis Kelce yesterday than we saw of her.
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"That’s not happening though. You’ve got to get going, you’ve got 39 receiving yards in the first two games. Come on now. Football season is here. Honeymoon’s over. Let’s handle our business, OK."
It could be part of the game plan as well. Through the first two games, Kansas City’s tight ends have only been targeted 11 times – Kelce, Noah Gray and Jared Wiley all receiving the targets. The team has used Isiah Pacheco and Xavier Worthy as complements to Rashee Rice early in the year.
Chiefs coach Andy Reid was asked whether teams were doing more to take Kelce away.
"They did have some things that they were attempting there," Reid said Monday. "He’ll get his catches. It’s not that he’s slowing down or any of that bit, that’s not what the deal is. It’s just teams focus on him and kind of know (that) he’s been Pat’s (Mahomes) go-to guy. What it’s done though, Soren (Petro), is that it’s allowed us to utilize the other guys around him and they’ve been productive."
But with Pacheco going down, one of the tight ends is going to need to step up more and get open for Patrick Mahomes.
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