Travis Kelce is opening up the playbook on his decision to keep playing football.
The tight end had previously confirmed that he’d be returning to the Kansas City Chiefs for the 2025 season amid speculation that he may retire, and now he’s opening up about the big decision.
“The biggest thing is I f–king love playing the game of football,” he told his brother Jason Kelce on the March 5 episode of their New Heights podcast. “I still feel like I can play it at a high level and possibly at a higher level than I did last year.”
Despite going 15-2 during the latest season, the Chiefs lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl falling short of a historic three-peat and critics had a lot to say about Travis’ performance during the season.
“I don’t think it was my best outing,” he admitted. “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.”
While the 35-year-old told his brother who retired from the Eagles after the previous NFL season that he’s “absolutely killed it in retirement,” Jason’s off-field success “didn’t persuade” him in making this decision.
In the end, Travis said, he still feels as though he can “give it a good run” and wants to rewrite the narrative after last season’s setbacks.
“I have a bad taste in my mouth in how I ended the year, and how well I was playing and how accountable I was for the people around me,” he explained. “I love so many people in Kansas City in that facility, in the community and it’s home for me now. I don’t want to leave that life yet.”
“I’ve put in a lot of hard work and I’ve put in a lot of focus into being the best that I can for KC, and last year it didn’t end well for us,” Travis continued. “I feel like there’s a responsibility for me to play out the contract that I initially signed, to give Kansas City and the Chiefs organisation everything that I got, and that’s what I’m gonna do.”
The Grotesquerie star said that he approached making this choice in the same way he does “to all the other decisions” he makes and made if “pure gut feeling,” adding that the Chiefs’ head coach Andy Reid who drafted Travis in 2013, the same year he took on the job was another big factor in his decision to keep playing.
“Coach Reid has been one of the biggest influences on my life, not just in the game of football,”he explained. “I don’t want to stop going to work with him, and I don’t want to stop learning from him. I don’t want to stop being the reason why he has success or being part of the reason why he has success.”
That said, Travis admitted that “the biggest factor” in his decision to return was “losing the Super Bowl” and admitted that hanging up his helmet after winning would’ve been “a pretty cool way to go out, but I think I would still have this love for the game and the feeling.”
“I feel like I owe the guys that I come into that building with a whole lot more of effort and focus,” he noted. “I just don’t know what it was during that game, man, I wasn’t at my best.”
All in all, he feels like he’s at his best when he’s “out there playing it for the right reasons,” and that’s exactly how he feels about his decision to keep playing perhaps for more than just one more season, too.
“Kansas City, baby, we’re back at it for at least one more year,” Travis ended the conversation. “I can’t say whether or not this will be the last year, because I still love a lot of what I do for the city of Kansas City and the Chiefs Organisation , so I know I got one more left on my contract and I’m gonna give you guys everything that I got.”
Erizia Rubyjeana
Follow us on:
