Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs is one of the best tight ends in the NFL. He can also reasonably lay claim to being one of the greatest of all time. Kelce comes from prime NFL stock; his elder brother Jason is the starting center for the Philadelphia Eagles. Travis played football, basketball, and baseball in high school, where he was a dual-threat quarterback for Cleveland Heights High School. In his final season in high school, Kelce passed for 1,523 yards and 21 touchdowns while rushing for another 1,016 and ten scores. In his last college season at Cincinnati, then a full-time tight end, Kelce boasted impressive stats, catching 59 passes for 875 yards and 10 touchdowns.
Kelce showed all the athletic traits a modern tight end could wish to have during the pre-draft process. He posted an 82nd-percentile 40 time of 4.66, contributing to his 90th-percentile Speed Score. Kelce also dons an incredible wing span - his Catch Radius is 10.16 (80th-percentile). He was a third-round draft pick by the Chiefs in 2013. He suffered a knee injury during his rookie campaign that required microfracture surgery. The injury led him to miss almost the entire season.
Kelce made his mark in the league starting in his second season. That season (2014), he caught 67 passes for 862 yards. This began a sequence of nine straight seasons in which he compiled at least 800 yards, topping 1,000 yards in his last seven. No tight end in NFL history has more 1,000-yard seasons than Kelce. He signed a four-year, $57.25 million contract extension with the Chiefs on August 14, 2020, and that season Kelce caught 105 passes for 1,416 yards and a career-high 11 touchdowns. That yardage was enough to set a new single-season record for tight ends in NFL history. Kelce has been efficient as well during that span. He has finished no lower than No.2 in Expected Points Added (EPA) since 2016.
Kelce has made his mark as one of the premier yards after catch operators at the tight end position throughout his memorable run of dominance. He has not ranked lower than No. 3 among tight ends in YAC since 2017. He led all tight ends in 2017 and 2021. Kelce commanded a 22.3-percent target share in 2021 and led all tight ends with 543 routes run. He saw only seven deep balls in 2021, but still finished No.4 in Air Yards with 971. Kelce also attempted three passes in the regular season, a nod to his experience as a QB. He had one completion for four yards and a touchdown.
Kelce performed as a top tight end before 2018, but his partnership with Patrick Mahomes propelled him into another tier. Kelce averaged 4.9 receptions for 62 yards and 13.3 PPR points per game with non-Mahomes QBs under center. With Mahomes, Kelce has averaged 6.4 grabs for 82.6 yards and a whopping 18.2 PPR points per outing. Kelce has also been a historic producer in the playoffs. He has seven career games in the postseason with 100 yards or more. The only player with more such games is Jerry Rice.
Fantasy gamers now yearly assume Kelce's production is going to drop off as he continues to age, but in 2022, a season during which he turned 33, Kelce again returned to dominance, posting 18.6 fantasy points per game. That was No. 1 at the position, the fourth time in five seasons that he has led the TE position in fantasy points per game. He has been No. 1 or No. 2 in TE PPG in seven straight seasons. The 18.6 PPG would have been good for WR7 on the season. He also added 609 YAC, leading tight ends. That would have put him at No. 2 in YAC at the wide receiver position, behind only Justin Jefferson.
