NEW ORLEANS — On Fridays, Travis Kelce wanders.
Earlier than video games, because the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs undergo their apply protocol — 10 performs for the offense in opposition to the scout-team protection, and vice-versa — Kelce is a person unto himself, locked into the duty at hand and transfixed throughout what would in any other case be useless intervals. When it’s the first-team protection’s flip, whereas the remainder of his offensive teammates watch from the sideline, Kelce roams onto an adjoining discipline and enters his personal realm. He paces and stutter-steps, reducing out and in of imaginary breaks, working via performs in his head whereas speaking to himself.
Nobody disturbs him. Nobody questions him. Within the Chiefs’ inside sanctum, it’s merely an accepted indisputable fact that one of many NFL’s most completed gamers can be one of many sport’s most severe dudes on the subject of making ready for battle.
Mentally, coaches and teammates don’t know the place Kelce goes in these moments. They simply know he’s very a lot at dwelling.
“Trav is a man that, you may inform, he’s all the time in his personal zone,” veteran receiver DeAndre Hopkins, who the Chiefs acquired in a commerce with the Tennessee Titans final October, advised me Wednesday. “He’s all the time locked in at apply. He takes every thing critically. How he practices, and the way he goes about his day is unbelievable to see.”
That is the Travis Kelce the remainder of the world doesn’t see, the onetime screwup who has matured as a person, turn out to be obsessive about his craft and desires to maintain doing it at a excessive degree for so long as it’s athletically viable. The 35-year-old tight finish has an opportunity to earn his fourth Tremendous Bowl ring on Sunday, when the Chiefs face the Philadelphia Eagles in Tremendous Bowl LIX, and add to his future first-ballot Corridor of Fame resume.
He has many good causes to name it a profession, together with broadcast stardom, a slew of performing alternatives and a hot-and-heavy romance with singer Taylor Swift, maybe the world’s greatest celeb. But Kelce’s intention — win or lose, as reiterated throughout the Chiefs’ media session at their New Orleans resort Wednesday morning — is to maintain taking part in the game he reveres, on his phrases.
“I need to play so long as I can play,” Kelce stated.
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Two days earlier, Kelce expressed an identical sentiment, telling reporters, “It’s months like these that make me really feel like I can play eternally. I’ve nonetheless received loads of soccer left in me.”
As Kelce’s fame has grown — at first as a result of extremely common “New Heights” podcast he co-hosts together with his brother, not too long ago retired Eagles middle Jason; after which, exponentially, as soon as he and Swift turned an merchandise early within the 2023 season — his office has turn out to be his protecting cocoon, an surroundings the place he could be a chief and tone-setter and still have the liberty to arrange in his personal, idiosyncratic method.
The soccer discipline is a cocoon for Travis Kelce, away from the highlight of starring for a soccer dynasty and relationship pop megastar Taylor Swift. (Mark J. Rebilas / Imagn Photographs)
One in every of solely 14 gamers, and three tight ends, to have recorded greater than 1,000 profession receptions, Kelce will go down as an all-time nice. Many gamers in his age bracket usually take days off, in coaching camp and throughout the season, however Kelce refuses to do both. Even when Kansas Metropolis coach Andy Reid or his assistants counsel scaling again his reps in a given apply, Kelce pushes again.
“He’s getting older, and so we’re attempting to chop again a few of his reps, and he received’t do it,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes stated Tuesday. “He will get mad at you should you take him out of form. And that bleeds into all the group. Everytime you’re drained and everytime you’re not desirous to take a apply critically or take a rep critically, you take a look at him and he’s going full pace, scoring touchdowns after each catch, and it motivates you to take your recreation as much as one other degree.”
Kelce’s motivational magic was on full show within the Chiefs’ 32-29 AFC Championship Sport victory over the Buffalo Payments. Early within the recreation, second-year punt returner Nikko Remigio known as for a good catch regardless of having some room between him and the Payments gamers charging towards him. Remigio later advised FanDuel TV’s Kay Adams that Kelce approached him on the sideline and stated, “That’s not being nice, bro.”
On his subsequent return alternative, within the second quarter, Remigio raced 41 yards, organising a landing that gave Kansas Metropolis a 21-10 lead. Mentioned Remigio: “He was the primary one to greet me coming to the sideline, and he was like, ‘That’s the way you be nice, canine!’ And I used to be like, this can be a dream.”
Teammates and coaches say that Kelce is usually the primary and most vocal particular person to greet new acquisitions, even once they’re comparatively nameless practice-squad signees. He clearly relishes his function as an organizational standard-bearer, particularly in gentle of the best way he started his profession, and the way far he has come by way of his professionalism.
As soon as infamously suspended from the College of Cincinnati soccer group for a whole season after failing a marijuana take a look at, Kelce nonetheless had some tough edges when he arrived in Kansas Metropolis as a third-round choose within the 2013 draft. Early in his profession, he made an obscene gesture that Reid known as “an immature act” throughout a “Sunday Evening Soccer” defeat to the Denver Broncos. He has since described himself as having been egocentric, stat-obsessed and overly informal in his work ethic.
When Kelce was requested on Wednesday how completely different his strategy is now than it was in his first few seasons, he shook his head and stated, “It’s night-and-day completely different. I used to be much more targeted on particular person success and, you understand, what comes with having the person success is having the ability to be snug in who I’m, and assured in who I’m.
“And I believe with that particular person success, I’ve began to actually perceive what’s actual — and what’s actual is that this recreation’s solely enjoyable should you win soccer video games with the individuals round you. And as soon as I figured that out, it actually simply took off for me, and I’ve cherished taking part in within the league ever since, man.”
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This isn’t to say that Kelce’s hearth has disappeared. Keep in mind his celebrated confrontation with Reid throughout the second quarter of final February’s thrilling Tremendous Bowl LVIII victory over the San Francisco 49ers? Kelce, faraway from the sport on a pivotal red-zone play that resulted in a Chiefs fumble, was irate when he got here to the sideline and bumped up in opposition to Reid, practically knocking over the then-65-year-old coach.
Whereas quarreling with the notion that he pushed Reid, Kelce’s recollection isn’t a nice one.
“A push is a little bit of an exaggeration,” Kelce stated. “I might by no means push my coach like that. I used to be fired up, although, and Coach Reid is aware of I get fired up, and typically he will get fired up the identical solution to get me going. And at that time within the recreation, I simply needed to let him know, ‘You may put it on me, man. I’m prepared for it.’ I used to be fairly heated in that second. I do know I can’t catch him off guard like that to the place he stumbles.”
Three weeks in the past, Kelce caught some followers off guard within the Chiefs’ playoff opener, catching seven passes for 117 yards and a landing in a 23-14 divisional-round victory over the Houston Texans. On some performs, together with a 49-yard catch-and-run to the Houston 1-yard line within the second quarter, the tight finish evoked photos of his bodily prime.
After a considerably ho-hum common season, Travis Kelce has once more turned it on within the playoffs. (Mark J. Rebilas / Imagn Photographs)
At instances throughout what for him was a comparatively tame common season (97 catches, 823 yards, 8.5 yards per catch, three touchdowns), Kelce gave the impression to be visibly slowing down, to the purpose the place some puzzled whether or not the tip of his time with the Chiefs won’t be voluntary. His efficiency within the Texans recreation shredded that storyline, however few premier move catchers have thrived into their late 30s, and Kelce is aware of that nothing is promised.
Due to that, he’s savoring each second of his group’s quest to turn out to be the primary to win three consecutive Tremendous Bowls.
“It’s such a particular time in Chiefs historical past, and this legacy is simply so enjoyable to be part of, due to the people who we now have right here,” he stated Wednesday. “And I’m simply attempting to cherish all these recollections and take advantage of out of all these alternatives that we now have chasing these rings.”
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As he tries so as to add to his gaudy postseason profile and hoist one other Lombardi Trophy, Kelce is experiencing pleasure for the gamers round him, particularly these newcomers who’ve but to be a part of a championship run.
“I believe at this level, I simply need this Tremendous Bowl much more so for the blokes round me than I do myself,” he stated. “It’s simply the place I’m at in my profession, and I really feel like I’m much more selfless these days than I used to be early on. This group is extra particular than any I’ve ever been on.
“You already know, I used to need to be generally known as the best tight finish ever, however I believe it’s simply extra so having fun with these moments that I’ve with my teammates and attempting to get these wins and create these recollections. I’ve gotten away from desirous to be generally known as that. I believe I need to be generally known as simply among the best teammates these guys have ever had.”
Kelce will, as a result of his vitality is infectious — and since on any given day on the facility, and particularly on Fridays, it’s very, very apparent how a lot he cares.
He’s not able to stroll away from the sport he loves. However know this: On Friday at Tulane College, when it’s the first-team protection’s flip to run via its performs, Kelce will wander away and enter his distinctive, rambling realm, and nobody in his presence will say a phrase.
(Prime illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; photograph: Brooke Sutton / Getty Photographs)