KC Chiefs TE Travis Kelce Discusses How Long He Wants to Play Football
When the Kansas City Chiefs traded superstar wide receiver Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins last offseason, they were placing even more faith in tight end Travis Kelce to serve as the No. 1 option for quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Remarkably, even in his age-33 season, Kelce upped his production and turned in perhaps the best season of his career in the process.
Hauling in 110 passes for 1,338 yards and 12 touchdowns, Kelce finished sixth in AP Offensive Player of the Year voting and was elected to his eighth Pro Bowl while also being a first-team All-Pro for the fourth time. Despite dealing with some nicks and bruises throughout the year and even admitting how at times it was difficult to keep his body in tip-top shape for games, Kelce had a year for the ages. On Tuesday when he got asked how he maintains this level of production, Kelce mentioned having a heightened focus on the details.
“I just love the game," Kelce said. "I think that kind of keeps me living with a young, fun-loving football player. I get to play a game for a living at the age of 33, 34 and, you know, I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to lose that excitement that I had for a game when I was a kid. Every single day I get to come in with the best team, best players, best coaches in the world so it makes it easy to just come in here and just enjoy it. I would say I just focus on a lot of the smaller things, the details of things and just try to make sure that everything as an athlete in terms of muscles and explosion and things like that, that everything’s firing so I don’t go out there and tweak my back like I did last week.”
The Chiefs kicked off their 2023 mandatory veteran minicamp on Tuesday, which runs this week through Thursday before everyone breaks off for a while and will reconvene for training camp late next month. Kelce mentioned how he uses this time of the offseason as a prime opportunity to ensure that he's ready for another grueling training camp, regular season and playoff run, and those efforts are clearly working. In his old(er) age now, he's also tasked with setting an example for other tight ends and pass-catchers on the team.
After declaring that Kansas City has the best tight end room in the league, Kelce explained how he embraces the mentorship aspect of his career.
"The young guys, the guys that are kind of like still getting molded into this offense that you’ll see this year... any bit of advice I can give to anybody, and that’s kind of across the league — I’ll give nuggets of gold over here at Tight End U coming up next week or what I think are nuggets of gold," Kelce said. "I’m here to try to get everybody to be at their best and still got that confidence that what we do over here is always going to be, you know, number one.”
Kelce's greatness is unmatched in some regards, even when his accomplishments are compared to all-time greats. He's the only tight end to have as many consecutive 1,000-yard seasons as he does, which is a record he very well could extend once again in 2023-24. By the time he retires, he'll be viewed as perhaps the best tight end to ever play (some believe he's already there). With that said, when factoring in the natural aging curve of an NFL player and Kelce's multiple tweaks of his back — among other minor ailments — over the past year or so, it's easy to envision a world where Father Time gets the best of him soon.
He isn't worried about that, though. Even as he's set to turn 34 in October of this year, Kelce will almost surely remain one of the best active players at his position. After all, he did lead all tight ends in targets, receptions, yards, receptions of 20 yards or more and touchdowns last season. Instead of showing signs of slowing down, he found new ways to improve. When asked how much longer he wants to play before facing the reality of retirement, Kelce said he's all in on keeping things rolling as long as he can.
"Until the wheels fall off, baby," Kelce said. "I love this game, man. I know I'm going to miss it when I'm done playing. I hear you on that, and that's a business decision I'm sure I'll have to make at some point in my life but for right now, I'm in this building wanting to win football games."
