The two best teams in football are facing off in a Super Bowl overflowing with storylines. Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts are the first Black quarterbacks to ever compete against each other for the Vince Lombari Trophy. Coaching and front office connections abound between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles, all tied directly to Andy Reid. Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce will become the first pair of brothers to ever matchup in the Super Bowl, too.
The biggest game in the country's biggest sport hardly requires ginned-up drama from the sports media world to be of mass interest, basically. The Chiefs and the Eagles produce enough storylines all by themselves.
Don't tell that to Skip Bayless and the producers of Undisputed, though, who woke up on Super Bowl Sunday and apparently couldn't find anything better to discuss than a make-believe controversy surrounding Travis Kelce's innocuous comments about playing in Reid's ballyhooed offensive system.
“TRAVIS KELCE SAID ANDY REID (NOT PATRICK MAHOMES) IS THE REASON HE GETS SO OPEN AND CATCHES SO MANY PASSES. NOW ON @undisputed ON FOX,” Bayless tweeted (in all caps) as he and Shannon Sharpe debated the non-story live on-air.
Kelce, asked why he's “always open” offensively, provided the fodder for Bayless and Undisputed a couple days ago.
“I say it all the time. Andy Reid baby. Big Red,” Kelce said, per Jeff Kerr of CBS Sports. “He can dial some stuff at the right time, create some things at the right time. On top of that, everyone is just doing their job. It's not just me going out there and getting open, I'm sure you guys like to think that, but there's a lot of madness to it. There's a lot of guys doing their job for the big picture.”
Kelce earned his fourth First Team All-Pro nod this season after finishing with 110 catches for 1,338 yards and 12 touchdowns. While sustained dominance into his mid-30s is no doubt at least the partial product of playing with Mahomes, who won his second MVP award in 2022, Kelce was racking up individual accolades well before the Chiefs superstar quarterback took reins of Reid's offense in 2018.
Kelce'ss initial First Team All-Pro selection came in 2016 and he was Second Team All-Pro a year later. His incredible run of eight consecutive Pro Bowl selections began in 2015, when Alex Smith was under center for Kansas City.
Clearly, Reid's notoriously innovative scheming and play-calling in the passing game has played a part in Kelce's ongoing excellence. Acknowledging that reality is no knock at Mahomes, especially considering the lavish praise Kelce routinely bestows on his future Hall-of-Fame teammate.
“His talent level goes far beyond more than his ability to instinctually just go out there,” Kelce said of Mahomes during the week leading up to Super Bowl Sunday, per Nate Davis of USA Today. “He's playing a step ahead, he's almost playing chess out there in terms of he's got three or four moves already in his pocket depending on what the defense does. That's what's gonna make him the greatest ever to go down. And I love playing with him, and he's non-stop always trying to find ways to make himself better for this team.”
Does that sound like a pass-catcher taking shots at his quarterback? We'll leave it to Bayless and Undisputed to needlessly argue otherwise.
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