They’re already preparing…

:(

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">�� BREAKING ��<br><br>The <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Chiefs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Chiefs</a> have signed TE Anthony Firkser to reserve future deal.<br><br>Per, <a href="https://twitter.com/AaronWilson_NFL?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AaronWilson_NFL</a>. <a href="https://t.co/XlChJxHRlK">pic.twitter.com/XlChJxHRlK</a></p>&mdash; Chiefs Blitz (@ChiefsBlitz) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChiefsBlitz/status/1889808317024993689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 12, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Travis has had a HOF career, has multiple SB rings, mid 30s and in a high profile relationship … with declining stats and in an offense that should be featuring the WRs more.

It has to be incredibly taxing mentally and physically. My guess is he was 100% committed to retirement thinking he would end with another ring and a 3-peat. Now, he is faced with talking himself back for another season in pursuit of another ring… or just saying, screw it, I’m tired, getting older and I’m dating Swift.

My guess is that he walks and focuses on what should be a lucrative off the field career. And nobody could blame him, with either decision, but I’ll bet he walks.

I will say, it would be special if we got one more year.

Even if he doesn’t say that next year is it, we’ll all know it will be and it would be incredibly cool to send him off at Arrowhead one final time when all the fans know it’s his last game.

Plus if we get a farewell tour maybe the NFL will gift us a Jerome Bettis, Ray Lewis, Peyton Manning style send off Super Bowl.

He has nothin left to prove and from the looks of things we might be on a down year or two.

Would not blame him if he walks away.

I think he should go. It's a physically draining sport. He's old enough to say "screw this, it's time to enjoy an easier life." He has so many good things going on in his life outside football. We know the dude is pretty damn busy with the football duties from August to February. He could spend way more time with his lady & other family/friends if he quits the grind of a yearly football schedule.

What if he just wants that 4th ring?

Obviously he hasn’t nothing to prove, but to have the best chance at another ring is tempting.

I think he comes back.

You can keep on wishing and hoping that KC is going away, but I'm sorry to tell you that Mahomes is 29. We ain't going anywhere.

Yup.

Forget the Eagles for a second.

Who in the AFC is taking the Chiefs out?

Pick a team, and I’ll tell you why they won’t.

Just get to the Super Bowl and see what happens.

I kind of want him to retire to be honest. It's time to move on and start a new chapter. I'm already ready to retool and shock everybody this year because I know everybody will write us off and overlook Worthy and Rice. Just add one of these stud RBs from the draft, at least be adequate at LT, and we'll be good to go.

Really can’t see anyone doing it besides Buffalo or Baltimore.

Cincinnati should be in that group but they have terrible ownership and that consistently dooms them.

Brother, just wait for all the Chargers/Broncos AFCW picks this summer

It might be just what fuels us through the season LMAO

I never want to hear about the Chargers ever again.

Herbert doesn’t have the fire to ever win anything of significance.

Denver could be a problem fairly soon. Payton can coach and I’m impressed with Nix’s moxie. Plus they have deep pocketed owners.

If this is it for Travis, I believe I will finally understand the feeling the old guard Chiefs fans had when the Super Bowl 4 team began to retire from the NFL.

Whether you’re back for one more run or calling it a career - thanks for everything, Trav!

Watched New Heights and come to the conclusion that he is retiring.

LMAO LMAO LMAO

Good Grief Charlie Brown ! :eek:

He exceeded basically every expectation anyone had for him this year. I have no reason to believe he couldn’t wind up being as good as a Jalen Hurts.

I don't really get all this 'deep pocketed owners' stuff.

The cap is the cap. Clark has never balked at spending money.

He can’t be half in at this point. The NFL is too brutal to have any second thoughts.

It’s been said before, but his midsection looked noticeably fatter this year. Not by regular people standards, but by NFL elite athlete standards.

If he comes back, he HAS to know right now. And he has to dedicate himself to getting in better shape.

I don’t blame Taylor Swift like some, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he was a little distracted last offseason. Can’t say I blame him either.

Well, if he does retire, we should re-sign Brown. That'll help get through a Rice suspension.

And Gray is a perfectly decent TE, he won't catch 97 balls, but he'll be a good 4th option/safety blanket.

Fix the o-line and find a RB with some explosion in the draft and we'll be okay.

All reasonable things to achieve.

LT is the scary one, but we’re due. RG doesn’t worry me in the least. Other 3 spots are set.

All good things come to an end. Travis looks like he has a full life outside of football. As far as the underpaid comments, you are what you can get and making millions playing a game plus advertising is something few people can even dream of much less comprehend.

Dude seemed burnt the **** out on his podcast

Oh man, I don't want to see him go, but if that's what he decides to do, then so be it. Thanks Trav, if this is what you decide. :(

Void Years allow you to cheat the cap. The Chiefs don’t really play that Void Year game, but other teams like Philadelphia have been doing it for many years.

Not getting the threepeat for Trav is really going to haunt me.

Make fun of me if you wish, but I still think Mahomes could go back to back and have another chance one day.

I’m really hoping for one more year. I don’t care much if it’s a bad year. To end like that just doesn’t feel right. But obviously my opinion means nothing to the man himself. But Mahomes not throwing to 87? Makes me feel sick

Such a shame Mahomes and him have an age difference. Imagine if trav was just now turning 30? The league would be ****ed

I'm wondering if he's burnt out could he pull a Gronk and come back in a year?

Actually just looked at it Witten actually retired for a year and came back played 2 more years retired at the same age as Kelce

It’s not a bad idea. Or pull a Chris jones, except in partnership with the chiefs. Where they agree to let him skip the preseason and maybe even a few games. And the goal is purely to get a fresh energized kelce ramped up by end of season. It’s not a gronk situation where his body is finished. It’s kelces head right now and he has unfinished business

With the way he’s getting trashed on social media, he needs to lean hard into the burnout. But man I also don’t think he can hear that chirping and end his career that way. And he deserves a proper hero’s send off not just one that ends abruptly.From there, for gods sake if (and hopefully when) he comes back, cut back on all the reps including into the playoffs.

Kelce retiring would save $17M in cap space. The Chiefs would have to reinvent their offense without him and rely more on Worthy, Rice, etc. I think Noah Gray could step up and "replace" him to the extent that he can be a productive TE in this offense.

Kelce holding out or restructuring to a contract with a mutual agreement on some kind of holdout would also accomplish that. Especially as that would mean slow ramp up of reps until mid to late season. And again, we save on cap but the team also loses $300m of the value kelce brings to the franchise. Keep him and load up on some guaranteed contracts while you have this unicorn who gives you lots of cash on hand.

I also love the idea of taking a year off. Give us the cap relief, let kelce recharge, and use this year for a reset. Trade a few guys, stockpile those comp picks. But he can’t go out this way and I’d also hate for us to just lose him when he still has a lot to contribute.

And had 63 rec for 530 yards, then 13 for 69 in 13 games his final year, albeit with the Raiders.

It when it starts to go, it doesn't maintain a level. It's called decline for a reason. It will just be sad to see

I've read a little about the void years in a contract. I don't really understand how it works, can someone provide an example of it? How does it allow teams to cheat or appear to cheat the cap?

He sounded done in the New Heights podcast and made it sound like he wasn't having any fun anymore. He seemed really dejected his last game will be a loss, as opposed to angry and wanting to come back again.

From what I can see it's a dangerous game where a GM spreads a players cap hit across later years in the contract called "void years". Once those void years hit the player can literally give up on the team and sign somewhere else. The GM and team at that point are ****ed and have to eat the dead cap money and are hamstrung. Russian roulette. Eagles have gotten lucky as all hell with this but I can guarantee you that with their dbag coach and their emotionally coddled stars that at some point this house of cards can fall and they'll be paying AJ Brown to catch balls for the Cowboys or somebody. I can see why a team like the Chiefs would avoid this.

I think he's just emotional right now. I wouldn't put too much into anything he says right now one way or the other.

Yup. A lot of this sounds very similar to how Jason sounded right after losing the Super Bowl and everyone thought he was going to retire . It’s gonna be way worse now than it will feel a few weeks from none

It is a lot less fun given the complete disappearance of the high-powered offense. Addressing the total collapse of the Chiefs offense over the last couple years is really the only issue that matters this offense. If Kelce retires, it will be partly because he doesn't think it has been fixed and it won't be fun again next year.

New Heights yesterday.....He is gone

charles thinks he's back

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">&quot;We can&#39;t go out like that.&quot; — <a href="https://twitter.com/charless_94?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@charless_94</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/EmmanuelAcho?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@EmmanuelAcho</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/charless_94?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@charless_94</a> discuss if Travis Kelce should retire <a href="https://t.co/YJzq8QRa7w">pic.twitter.com/YJzq8QRa7w</a></p>&mdash; The Facility (@TheFacilityFS1) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheFacilityFS1/status/1890083364214067209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 13, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

It's time to let the binky go, young man

Rest up, get on a new offseason conditioning program, get on whatever whale sperm diet and all the other shit Brady did to keep playing, and come back...or don't come back

But like Charles said, thats a tough game to walk away as your final game, and not because it was a loss

Swift won't be off tour for long. There was an album released towards the end of this one. Now's the time to test the compatibility

If he thinking about it he should. Doubt means it's time.

It's kind of telling that this story broke before the Super Bowl as opposed to after it.

Thanks, I can see the dangers of this yet the Eagles have been doing this for years and have yet to suffer. I guess the part that I don't understand is how you can write a contract for 5 years and have wording that says that after 2 years, it's not valid. Given that the cap goes up every year, how much of a risk is it really? Based on this strategy, you can simply keep pushing the cap hit into later years allowing you to pay everyone.

What am I missing? Why not just restructure Kelce to a 5 year deal and give him a $20M signing bonus? Let him take the $4m and when he retires, the signing bonus goes away like it did for Tom Brady?

He has a month to figure it out otherwise he's released.

No

:facepalm:

LOL

He’s 8000 years old

Note that he also opened up the podcast by talking about how he won’t see some of the guys again… because of the contract situations that will them into free agents. Meaning he will see the guys who stick around.

I feel like we’re reading too much into how he feels a few days after a loss so bad it’s going to really sting for a while. Give it a couple of weeks.

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.

Yeah that’s the thing. Keep in mind that when rashee was healthy, everyone asked what the hell happened to kelce. We started leaning heavy on kelce after we lost rashee.

Rashee helps a ton. But he was also tunnel visioned on him early on. And that’s a habit we also need to break out of him.

Hopefully any Rice suspension is no more than two games.

Its true, he was ripping 5-10 yarders to Rice in tight coverage and watching him go get another 10-20 to top it off

And Mahomes zeroed in on Kelce in the super bowl and there were immediately 4 guys that surrounded him after every throw. The Eagles knew he was Pat's blanket.

Omenihu thinks Kelce will be back. I really believe he would have retired had we won.

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/chief...-out-like-that

so Kelce is due to be paid 11.5 million on March 15? Decision time comin up fast

FYP. Whenever Mahomes has needed someone to go to in big time situations, it has always been Kelce. That is going to be a huge adjustment for him. It's not as much as him looking for other options because Kelce is covered, but more knowing that he's just not there anymore.

If we’re a month down the road and he’s still unable to make up his mind, then that means he needs to retire.

it's gonna be a long offseason

They can add a void year to reduce his cap number.