It’s week 2 of the NFL season and as a non-Chiefs fan, I’m already tired of Travis Kelce. He won’t finish as a bad person, necessarily, just a loud person, and someone who likes to shout ‘We have to fight…for the right…on paaaarrrrrty!!” every time he’s near a microphone. Here he says it after the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. Here he is do it during karaoke with Jimmy Fallon. Here it is again during the Chiefs’ Super Bowl rally.
Probably lost on Kelce, who sang the Beastie Boys’ classic ‘pump-up song” is that the band wrote the song itself as a parody of the “dumb” rock songs that were in music at the time. “The one thing that upsets me is that we may have reinforced certain values of some people in our audience, when in fact our own values were completely different,” Mike D once said. “There were a lot of boys singing along [Fight for Your Right] who were oblivious to the fact that it was total nonsense from them. Irony is often overlooked.”
A lot of guys are probably nice Travis Kelce. A recent survey of Millennial and Gen Z women found that many of them consider men listening to Joe Rogan’s podcast to be a “red flag” for dating. I humbly suggest that a 33 year old man who keeps shouting “Fight for your right to party” into a live microphone is a beige flag at the very least. Don’t say I didn’t, but don’t say I didn’t warn you, Taylor.
But I digress.
Travis Kelce has what the kids these days call “main character energy.” It may or may not be him have started rumors that he’s dating Taylor Swift, then became indignant when people wanted to ask him about it. He tried to take over the stage when the Chiefs were in the White House and had to be stopped by Patrick Mahomes. He hosts Saturday Night Live. He has taken Aaron Rodgers’ place in being the person I see most during the Sunday commercials. His podcast with brother Jason is absolutely constantly promoted in my Xitter timeline in a nefarious plot to keep me off the platform.
All of this, as I said, is fine. We have no indication that Travis Kelce is problematic in any meaningful way, for example Deshaun Watson or Aaron Rodgers. But for anyone outside of Kansas City…Travis Kelce is a lot. And he’s everywhere a lot, especially on the field against your favorite team. That certainly made the first half of his season debut in week two baffling.
In the first half it was hard to believe that Kelce was even on the field. He was targeted by QB Patrick Mahomes just once, which resulted in an incomplete pass and raised the question of what exactly Andy Reid and company were doing. (Believe me, like bears fan, I understand the feeling about Matt Nagy calling you plays and not understanding the thought process behind it). On the sideline, Kelce was clearly frustrated, and KC’s offense played out like, well, a typical Matt Nagy offense.
But Mahomes was able to find Kelce more often in the third quarter, leading to this gem of a call from Ian Eagle:
By the time the Chiefs pulled off the 17-9 win over Jacksonville, Kelce had four receptions on nine targets and was averaging six and a half yards per carry, including a drop on what would have been his second TD of the game . It was clear that Kelce was still rusty after being sidelined Week 1 with a knee injury, but when he saw something happen between him and Mahomes, it was good news after the first half.
With the defending Super Bowl champions still licking their wounds after a week one loss to the Lions on Thursday night, getting Kelce back and healthy in Week 2 is good news in Kansas City, but it’s hard not to notice that the Chiefs not doing that look so dominant in the young season so far. The team, that average 28 and 29 PPG in 2021 and 2022 respectively have yet to get their 2023 offense going after scoring just 20 points in week one and 17 in week 2. That’s a tough way to start the season, and Andy Reid and others will have to do that Find out how to resurrect the Mahomes…Kelce connection to stay atop the AFC West.