You have to fight for your right to party!
Five years after he retires, Travis Kelce will earn a gold jacket and will be forevermore immortalized in Canton.
But for now, Kelce still has plenty of good football left in the tank, and the Kansas City Chiefs are paying him accordingly, agreeing a two-year, $34.25M extension that will make Kelce the highest-paid tight end in the league, NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported.
Kelce’s career has been nothing short of amazing, as he is regarded as a Top 2 tight end along with Rob Gronkowski. The Cincinnati product and the Cleveland native, accumulated seven consecutive seasons of 1,000-plus receiving yards from 2016-2022, falling just short of making it eight straight campaigns in 2023 with 93 receptions for 984 yards and five touchdowns in a Chiefs offense that needed the entire 17-game regular season to find their groove prior to making another run to a Super Bowl win.
Over his 11 NFL seasons, Kelce has hauled in 907 passes for 11,328 yards and 74 touchdowns, earning nine trips to the Pro Bowl and four first-team All-Pro selections. He joined an exclusive club being named a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s All-Decade Team for the 2010s, and at 34 years old, he remains one of the most dangerous and electric players at the position in the NFL.
Kelce did not need the brilliant Patrick Mahomes to do his thing, but since the Texas Tech standout ascended into superstardom, Kelce has benefitted greatly. Mahomes took over as Kansas City’s starting quarterback in 2018, replacing Alex Smith and kicking off an era of dominance that we have not seen since Tom Brady with the New England Patriots, in which the Chiefs have captured three Super Bowls and appeared in every AFC Championship Game from 2018-2023. They even the Arrowhead Invitational. In that span, Kelce has caught 600 balls for 7,428 yards and 52 touchdowns in the regular season, and added 243 receptions for 1,609 yards and 18 touchdowns in the playoffs.
Quarterback Mahomes celebrated the extension for his favorite target by posting on social media, “I told yall I’ll never let him leave!! Congrats my guy! @tkelce”
In the 2023 playoffs, Kelce became even more critical than usual for Mahomes in Kansas City’s 17-10 upset win over the top-seeded Ravens in Baltimore, catching 11 passes for 116 yards and a score to help the Chiefs take down the Ravens and return to the Super Bowl for a second-straight season. Despite not scoring in Super Bowl LVIII, Kelce played an important role in that game, too, snagging nine passes for 93 yards in the overtime triumph.
Kelce will go down as one of the greatest to ever play the game at that position by the time he walks away, and eventually, he will have a place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. With his new extension, Kelce is all but guaranteed to retire as a Chief, and he will make Hall of Fame money on his way to Canton.
