Travis Kelce is apparently coming back for a 13th season.
"I’m coming back for sure,” Pat McAfee says Kelce wrote in a text. “Going to try and get into the best shape I’ve been this offseason and get back to the mountaintop. Got a real bad taste in my mouth with how I played in that last game.”
Kelce’s announcement adds to a big day for KC’s offense. The other big development involved the team placing the franchise tag on guard Trey Smith. With the cap rising, they’ve decided they’ve got enough money to keep him around.
While Kelce is sticking around, he’s not quite the franchise-type difference maker he’s been for the bulk of his career. He’ll be 36 in October, with less juice in his legs. Two years in a row, he’s averaged the fewest yards per catch of his career – 10.6 in 2023, followed by 8.5 last year. Kelce had averaged over 12 yards per catch in each of his previous nine seasons.
Late in the 2023 season, it appeared Rashee Rice had supplanted Kelce as the team’s No. 1 pass-catching option, and Xavier Worthy was more productive than Kelce at the end of last year. When those guys are healthy, Kelce should be more of a supporting piece in the offense than he’s been in the past.
Kelce has scored only 5 and 3 touchdowns in the last two years. He caught 11, 10 and 12 touchdowns in his previous three seasons. And Kelce averaged less than 52 yards per game last year, 14 fewer than in each of his eight previous years.
Looking at PPR production, Kelce put up the 6th-best numbers among tight ends last year. He finished first or second in each of his previous eight seasons. Kelce’s PPR numbers were 50 percent better two years ago.
With his experience and smarts, no doubt he’ll chip in some key catches in high-leverage moments, but it’s looking unlikely he’ll be putting up top-5 numbers among tight ends again. I expect he’ll be going in the second half of the top 10 at his position in drafts this summer.
| KELCE: PER-GAME AVERAGES BY YEAR | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | G | No | Yards | TD | PPR | Rk |
| 2013 | 1 | .0 | .0 | .00 | .0 | -- |
| 2014 | 16 | 4.2 | 53.9 | .38 | 11.8 | 7 |
| 2015 | 16 | 4.5 | 54.7 | .36 | 12.1 | 8 |
| 2016 | 16 | 5.3 | 70.0 | .27 | 13.9 | 2 |
| 2017 | 15 | 5.5 | 69.2 | .53 | 15.7 | 2 |
| 2018 | 16 | 6.4 | 83.5 | .63 | 18.5 | 1 |
| 2019 | 16 | 6.1 | 77.1 | .38 | 16.0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 15 | 7.0 | 94.4 | .76 | 21.0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 16 | 5.8 | 70.5 | .63 | 16.6 | 2 |
| 2022 | 17 | 6.5 | 79.0 | .73 | 18.7 | 1 |
| 2023 | 15 | 6.2 | 65.6 | .33 | 14.8 | 1 |
| 2024 | 16 | 6.1 | 51.5 | .19 | 12.3 | 6 |
—Ian Allan