With the Kansas City Chiefs out of playoff contention and quarterback Patrick Mahomes recovering from a torn ACL, all eyes in Chiefs Kingdom are about to be on Travis Kelce.
Kelce, 36, will soon need to determine if he is going to return to the NFL for another season or if he wants to hang it up for good. Even his brother, Jason Kelce, doesn’t know what he will decide.
“I’m curious, too,” Jason, 38, told ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt during ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown broadcast on Monday, December 15. “In my opinion, to nail that decision, you have to step away from the game for a little bit. Play these last three games, enjoy them with your teammates, enjoy them with your coaches. The team’s going to be different no matter whether you come back or not next year.”
Jason played his entire 13-year NFL career for the Philadelphia Eagles, retiring after the 2023 season. He made his announcement in March 2024, several weeks after the season ended.
“Enjoy these last three games and then let it sink in. It will come to you with time,” Jason continued. “There are so many emotions with this game right after a season, especially with the way this one’s been.”
The Chiefs have endured a frustrating season and were officially eliminated from playoff contention with their loss to the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday, December 14. Though their 6-8 record leaves plenty to be desired, seven of those losses have come by only one score.
“They’ve been close, and right now it’s just too fresh,” Jason said. “You gotta step away from it, you gotta think about it, and then, yeah, it will come to you.”
Travis is destined for the Hall of Fame and has been one of the faces of the franchise, along with Mahomes, 30, through the Chiefs’ historic run of five Super Bowl appearances in six years. He considered retirement after last season, but decided to return after Kansas City was blown out in the Super Bowl.
“I want to give it a good run,” Travis said in March during an episode of “New Heights,” the podcast he and Jason host together. “I got a bad taste in my mouth on how I ended the year and how well I was playing and how accountable I was for the people around me.”
Regardless of what he decides, it does not seem likely that Travis will let the process drag out too deep into the offseason.
“You know, seeing my brother go through it and seeing…just how the league works, the season kind of restarts in April, and I want to give the Chiefs a good opportunity to know whether I come back or not,” he told reporters in November. “And vice versa. Like, whether they want me back or not, it’s one of those things where I’d like to make that decision before they’ve got to get draft picks and free agency opens up.”
He added, “I’d like to make that decision before they’ve got to get draft picks and free agency opens to fill the roster appropriately… All that will be at the end of the season. I won’t be thinking about it until then.”
