Travis Kelce could have ended his football career at the same time as his brother Jason Kelce and gone out in style after winning his third Super Bowl ring. Instead, Kansas City Chiefs fans now fear that the tight end’s NFL legacy will end with a whimper as he struggles to find his footing this season. And it’s not just his stats that are indicative of a problem.
In three games of the 2024 season, Travis had zero touchdowns and made only eight catches for 69 yards. Every armchair quarterback and disgruntled fantasy football fan has an opinion on his dismal start to the season, with some people suggesting that Travis’ high-pressure relationship with Taylor Swift might be taking his mind away from the game. In a press conference, coach Andy Reid insisted that this is not the case. “Trav is fine. He just keeps being Trav,” he said. “He works his tail off and he hasn’t lost a step. … He’s not distracted.”
However, Travis has so much by which to be distracted. In regards to his relationship, he had a former president sic his supporters on his girlfriend. When Donald Trump wrote “I hate Taylor Swift!” on Truth Social, he was giving his followers a target. Travis has to be at least a little concerned about dating someone who has made enemies of a man who is so influential and who might even return to the Oval Office someday. However, while Swift might be the easiest culprit for football fans to point to when they play the blame game for Travis’ slump, the real problem might be that he’s in a transitional stage.
Travis Kelce’s pursuit of another passion is paying off
Amid the chatter about Travis Kelce’s poor performance on the field, “Grotesquerie” premiered on FX. The Ryan Murphy horror series is Kelce’s first significant acting role, and while he didn’t make an appearance in the first two episodes (he did appear in teaser trailers for the next episodes), he had to be just a tad nervous about how critics and the general public would react to seeing him in a totally different way.
Kelce has wanted to be on television for a long time. In 2023, his manager told Vanity Fair that the NFL star desperately wanted to host “Saturday Night Live” — a dream that came to fruition. Kelce was the eligible bachelor on his dating series called “Catching Kelce,” and in 2024, he signed on to host a spinoff of “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” titled “Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity?” To describe his aspirations outside of football, Kelce has said that he wants to get his “face out from under the helmet.” It’s something he’s clearly tackled with a lot of determination, but it might be taking some of his focus away from his game — it can be tough to juggle a lot of different projects, especially if they’re something that’s relatively new to you.
Every NFL player knows that they can’t play the game forever, and it’s extremely rare for a tight end to excel the way Kelce has in his mid-thirties. He’s likely aware that his game could decline and not rebound at any time, so he could be prioritizing his future over the now as he prepares to hang up his cleats someday.
Travis Kelce is feeling zero financial pressure to stick with football
Travis Kelce can now keep up his lavish lifestyle without playing football professionally if he so desires. The podcast he co-hosts with Jason Kelce, “New Heights,” became such a massive hit that Amazon offered the brothers a $100 million distribution deal with its Wondery podcast streaming service. If Travis continues his podcasting career while also hosting on television and scoring additional acting work, this will help pad his pockets to the point that putting on football pads, training his butt off, and taking hits will seem like a ridiculous thing to do — especially when he could be spending the time he dedicates to the sport pursuing one of the less-risky employment opportunities available to him.
So, with so many positives in his life outside of football, there’s no reason at all for Travis to be looking so glum on that bench other than the disappointment he feels for failing to live up to the expectations of fans and himself while he’s still in the game. “I’m my own worst critic. Everything outside of this building is just noise,” he said in a press conference. It has to be pretty tempting to just shut that self-doubt down and turn that noise off by fully completing his transition from star player to successful entertainer.
