Travis Kelce is still easily one of the best — if not the best — tight ends in the NFL today. The Kansas City Chiefs' hulking downfield target will be turning 33 in October, but even after several seasons of elite on-field production and despite his age, the best could still be yet to come for Kelce — and that could arrive this coming 2022 NFL season, in which he likely would have a greater role in the Chiefs' offense.
Let fantasy football analyst Alex Caruso (not that Alex Caruso) reveal just how big the reservoir of targets that Patrick Mahomes will have to distribute to Chiefs receivers following the departure of wideout Tyreek Hill.
Travis Kelce:
2016: TE1
2017: TE1
2018: TE1
2019: TE1
2020: TE1
2021: TE2
-Tyreek Hill’s 25.1% target share is goneDO NOT FADE THIS MAN
There will always be questions about Kelce's form because of his age, but the opportunity is never going to be an issue with him, especially with Hill gone. (Hill was traded by the Chiefs to the Miami Dolphins back in March for a number of rights to 2022 and 2023 draft picks.)
Dating back to 2015, Kelce has never had a season wherein he had fewer than 72 receptions. Only once since then that Kelce finished a season with fewer than 80 receptions, with his peak coming in 2020 with career-highs of 105 receptions, 1,416 receiving yards, and 11 touchdown catches.
Last season, Kelce posted his sixth straight season of 1,000+ receiving yards, recording 1,125 receiving yards with nine touchdowns on 92 receptions and 134 targets. Those numbers are good for second on the team behind, of course, Hill. In the same season, Hill led the Chiefs in red-zone targets with 25 and caught 70 percent of them, seven of which he turned into touchdowns. Kelce was third with 13 red-zone targets, catching 11 for a higher completion rate of 84.62 percent, while also coming away with five touchdowns on those receptions. That's a significant number of targets inside the 20-yard line that Mahomes and the Chiefs will have to look for somewhere else, and Kelce should be seen as the leading candidate to absorb most of them.
While the Chiefs made some moves in the offseason to try to plug the holes left by Hill by signing Marquez Valdes-Scantling and JuJu Smith-Schuster, Kelce has the edge on both of them. For one, Mahomes does not need to build rapport with Kelce. For all the magic Mahomes has done for the Chiefs in the pocket and out of it, Kelce has always been there to help the quarterback complete a ton of his throws. Kelce does not have the athleticism and speed of Hill, but he's a surehanded downfield weapon that is so hard to bring down. Hill's field-stretching ability will be missed by the Chiefs, and in Kelce, Mahomes can still continue having a target who can come through with tough catches amid double coverages.
The Chiefs have control of Kelce until at least the end of the 2025 NFL season. By then, Kelce would be 36 and likely a much lesser player than he this year. There is the possibility that Kelce would regress, as no one, not even the Chiefs, can be 100 percent sure of how their offense would play out in the first season that they will operate without the freakishly athletic Hill. But the numbers Kelce has put up through the years should carry more weight than any bleak prognostications of his immediate future in Kansas City. The best might just even be on the way.
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