Coming into this season, out of shape and overweight due to galavanting the globe with his girlfriend, he was still able to finish the season ranked 3rd in receptions among TEs and 5th in receiving yards. Oh, and at 35 years old too. He’s still a tier one TE and can perform like one IF he decides to come back and mentally focus on prioritizing his offseason conditioning. Tony G said he physically could’ve kept playing but he was done mentally. Travis is now teetering at this stage, I’m crossing my fingers he comes back.

Just saw on Yahoo Sports the Chiefs gave Kelce a March 14 deadline to decide if he is playing or not.
https://sports.yahoo.com/report-chie...195218855.html

I think all it would take is for the Chiefs to employ this accounting feature into their salary cap, and it would be rapidly banned by the NFL.

So maybe they should do it, and it would hit others books extremely hard.

:hmmm:

Exactly right, if he wants to go out on top instead of like this he needs to fully recommit to football

Dial in his conditioning and diet, and no more jet setting around with Taylor between games... if he does that, he should absolutely have another good run or two left in him

Right before the start of the new league year, makes sense.

Does he have any bonuses like a roster bonus due at the beginning of the league year? If so, that would explain it.

Yes


https://sports.yahoo.com/report-chie...195218855.html

Well there you have it. We will know one way or another in about 3 weeks.

Someone mentioned Pat cutting his hair. Has nothing to do with anything, but it would be ****ing awesome if he debuts a new haircut and goes back to old Pat. Revenge tour type shit.

Not bad. A lot of replacement level guys I don’t think we’ll miss.

I’d really like to find a way to keep Bolton, Omenihu, Hollywood, and Wharton.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it so probably need to make room for Winchester.

Reid would be nice to keep but he’s probably a luxury at this point.

I’d make an effort to bring back either Hunt or Perine as a 3rd down back.

Pennel or Nnadi as a cheap run stuffing body wouldn’t be bad.

According to that Nick Wright video posted earlier, he’s owed $12m on March 14th.

Definitely won't miss Nnadi, can't believe he's even still here

Dudes been the Invisible Man for two years now

They could probably convert it to base to sneak it past the deadline and then 'reconvert' it to signing bonus into void years if they really wanted to.

They can tapdance around it.

But man, if he doesn't know by March what he wants to do, then we kinda know what he wants to do. He just can't convince himself to do it.

If he doesn't know in a WEEK that he wants to come back and battle his ass off for the next 7 months to be ready to play football, then he just doesn't wanna do it.

Thank God Veach drafted Rashee Rice and Xavier Worthy. Those guys are gonna help this transition big time.

At this point, if we are talking just the on-field tangible stuff... Kelce's impact on our offense could be approaching Ewing Theory status.

He's been Mahomes' safety blanket for seven years, but he doesn't break tackles anymore. I can't even recall a single highlight worthy TD this year. It just feels like a lot of those targets aren't helping the offense in a meaningful way.

I'd prefer he come back and they work it out where he truly does play third-fiddle to Rice and Worthy, similar to how it looked he would early in 2024, but there's no world anymore where it's beneficial to the offense for Kelce to be targeted 120+ times.

Yeah.

{sigh}....yeah

It sucks. Age just sucks hard.

But we've gotten TOO dependent on him. And when he was truly generationally fantastic, it worked. He just isn't now. He's never going to be again.

But that's not going to stop Mahomes from trying to mind-meld with him. And/or expecting other guys on this roster to have the same connection with him.

I wonder if the "Patrick doesn't trust X" stuff comes back a little to the idea that he's literally played his entire career with a guy who's a damn savant and that's what he EXPECTS from the rest of his supporting cast.

Patrick...I'm sorry buddy, but it doesn't work like that. Everyone else is gonna run the route on the page and sometimes not even that. And you're just gonna have to deal with it.

Time to start trusting guys. Time to start letting them win with their talent, not by being psychic.

Mahomes was trusting Rice early this year. He was doing what Kelce used to do. You could see the trust he had in him.