Sunday night against the Texans was the kind of game that pours gasoline on every “Travis Kelce is washed” takeout there. For the first time in his Hall of Fame career, Kelce finished a game with more drops than catches, putting two crucial balls on the turf and hauling in just one pass for eight yards in a 20-10 loss.
One of those drops in the fourth quarter turned into an Azeez Al-Shaair interception and prime Houston field position, a brutal snapshot in a season where Kelce leads the Chiefs in drops and Kansas City’s passing game has looked shockingly mortal.
After the loss, Patrick Mahomes did not distance himself from his tight end. Instead, he framed the season as something he is savoring with a teammate whose career clock is loudly ticking.
“Every season I've had with him these last few years, I try to cherish because you never know [if this will be his last],” Mahomes said of Kelce, a 13-year veteran, via ESPN. “He got himself in great shape this year, and he's played great football. He'll have the option to do whatever he wants to do after this season, but I know one thing: He'll give everything he has for the rest of this season to try to give us a chance to make a playoff run. We know the chances are getting lower and lower.”
That is as close as Mahomes has come to publicly acknowledging that the end might be near for this version of the Chiefs’ core. At 6-7, with their AFC West streak effectively over and their wild card hopes fading, Kansas City no longer looks like the inevitability it once was.
Kelce’s dip in production and alarming drop rate have become symbols of that slippage, fair or not, and every miscue gets magnified by the team’s record.
The issues are not limited to one position, either. Head coach Andy Reid took the blame for a pivotal fourth-down failure in the fourth quarter, telling reporters he “put the guys offensively in a tough position” by staying aggressive on a call that backfired deep in Chiefs territory.
If this really is the final act of the Mahomes–Kelce era at its peak, both seem determined to make sure it does not end with a quiet fade.
