Every part Travis Kelce Has Acknowledged About Retiring From the NFL
Travis Kelce hasn't but shared if he's going to retire after 13 seasons with the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs. However right here's what Taylor Swift's fiancée has said about how he'll mediate if he wants to withhold taking half in.
No, Travis Kelce wasn't cosmically destined to retire after 13 seasons.
Yes, it might maybe perhaps perhaps swimsuit a definite story, nonetheless if the 36-One year-old decides to toss off his pads after taking half in in the NFL for fiancée Taylor Swift's well-liked quantity of years, that can be what you name a coincidence. We're 92 percent sure of that.
Meanwhile, retirement talk is nothing unusual for Travis, who signed a two-One year, $34.25 million contract in April 2024 after winning his third Huge Bowl ring with the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs. However right here’s the key time he looks to be giving as great consideration to going as he is to staying.
“I must give the Chiefs a upright opportunity, whether or no longer I come help or no longer—or whether or no longer they wish me help or no longer,” the star tight cease told journalists Nov. 21, per ESPN, noting he'd mediate his subsequent saunter by early March. “I'd delight in to manufacture that decision sooner than they've bought to safe draft picks and free agency opens to fetch the roster accurately. All that can be at the cease of the season. I won't be excessive about it unless then.”
Cue the reading between the lines of every little thing he's said since.
Not least due to, when Travis situation his tentative decision deadline, he aloof expressed self belief that his foundering group could perhaps also rally and manufacture the playoffs. They didn’t, and the Chiefs missed the postseason for the key time since 2014.
“I've bought so great adore for this group, this organization and the opposite folks right here,” Travis, again catching questions about his future plans, said Jan. 4 after their season ended with a loss to the Las Vegas Raiders. “I'll use a whereas with them, struggle by exit meetings and safe end to the family and resolve things out.”
As for how long it might maybe perhaps perhaps take him to mediate, he replied, “Who knows? Either it hits me swiftly or I've bought to take a whereas. Closing One year used to be a small bit bit more straightforward. I fetch I knew upright away I needed to roughly give this one [year] a shot. We'll gaze.”
After the Chiefs bought blown out by the Philadelphia Eagles in Huge Bowl LIX last February, there used to be quick hypothesis that Travis could well name it a profession. However he didn't must saunter out on a low, feeling he could perhaps even fetch done better.
“The ideal instruct is, I f–king adore taking half in the recreation of soccer,” he said a month later on his and brother Jason Kelce's Contemporary Heights podcast. “I aloof feel delight in I’m in a position to play it at a high stage and presumably at a bigger stage than I did last One year.”
He defined, “I if truth be told fetch a injurious taste in my mouth in how I performed the One year, and how smartly I was taking half in and how guilty I was for the opposite folks around me. I delight in so many individuals in Kansas Metropolis—in that facility, in the neighborhood—and it's home for me now. I don't must leave that existence but.”
Plus, at the time, he had one other One year left on that deal he signed in 2024.
Retiring after the Chiefs' 2nd straight Huge Bowl procure “didn't immoral my tips one bit,” Kelce said in September 2024 on The Rich Eisen Uncover earlier than the starting up of his 12th season. “I fetch the fun of the scheme back of this One year, being ready to presumably enact it a Third time in a row…I fetch that on my own used to be all I needed.”
In actuality, the athlete added, there used to be “no longer an opportunity in hell that I wasn’t coming help this One year.”
Travis eminent that he couldn't put “a particular time physique” on the rest of his profession, telling journalists in November 2024, “I revel in coming to work each day. Keep in mind the reality that, I look there are opportunities beyond soccer for me. However after I'm right here, I fetch delight in a small bit one again.”
“I'm going to withhold taking half in unless the wheels fall off,” he persevered. “Optimistically, that's no longer anytime quickly. It's sure that I'm nearer to the cease of my profession than the starting. I must aloof be definite I'm ready for existence after soccer as smartly.”
And he's undoubtedly been doing that, no longer letting a lackluster displaying in the 2025 Huge Bowl kill him from residing his finest existence all over the attach else—collectively with his fetch yard, the attach he proposed to Taylor in August straight away after they recorded her landmark two-hour appearance on Contemporary Heights.
So, now it lawful remains to be considered whether or no longer going out after a string of defeats is to any extent extra delectable to him than going out after shedding a Huge Bowl.
Speaking to Jason—whose retirement in 2023, at the age of 36, after 13 seasons with the Eagles used to be an emotional affair for the total family—Travis admitted on the Jan. 7 episode of Contemporary Heights that shedding their last recreation used to be “a worthy technique to saunter out, in particular with the quantity of success and the common that you simply withhold your self and the group to going into the season and all by the season.”
Travis did pad his particular person profession numbers, changing into the third tight cease in NFL historical past to reach 13,000 receiving yards, in the help of simplest Chiefs narrative Tony Gonzalez and Dallas Cowboys alum Jason Witten, and he's now sitting at No. 8 all-time in receptions with 1,080. And, he became simplest the 2nd player ever, after Raiders Corridor of Famer Tim Brown, to log 75 receptions in 10 consecutive seasons.
And making that historical past used to be as monotonous because it sounds.
“I've been putting my physique by the wringer, for the adore of it,” Travis acknowledged. “I enact revel in taking half in soccer and the bodily side of it…I lawful f–king adore that s–t.”
However his simplest thought for now, he said, used to be “lawful being a contemporary human for a couple weeks, presumably a month or so, and attempting to resolve out what I'm gonna enact subsequent in phrases of my future in soccer.”
Travis added, a small cryptically, “I've talked to a couple other folks in the flexibility already, , having the exit meetings and every little thing, and, they know the attach I stand, no no longer up to upright now. I fetch there's a entire lot of adore for the recreation that's aloof there and I don't fetch I'll ever lose that.”
Deciding whether or no longer to retire or no longer “is a worthy instruct to navigate,” he said. “At the identical time, if my physique can heal up and relaxation up, and I’m in a position to feel confident that I’m in a position to saunter available and give it one other 18-, 20-, 21-week flee, I fetch I could well enact it in a heartbeat. So, I fetch upright now, it's lawful discovering that retort and seeing how the physique feels after this recreation, roughly when it all settles down.”
However the hunt for clues right this moment continues, followers drafting off of Travis' enthusiasm when he expressed excitement that offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy used to be returning to the Chiefs after a entire lot of years a ways off from the group.
“I’m in a position to’t wait to leer him help in the building, man,” Travis said on the Jan. 21 episode of Contemporary Heights. “He’s even handed one of my well-liked coaches of all time, even handed one of my well-liked other folks of all time.”
Admire, gaze him in the building at observe…? Whereas the Huge Bowl will gaze a small bit unfamiliar with out the Chiefs this One year, the waiting recreation continues.
And right here's more to know concerning the fellow who could perhaps also or could perhaps also no longer be on the Chiefs subsequent season:
1. Travis Kelce could perhaps also very smartly be inextricably linked to Kansas Metropolis, Mo., for existence, nonetheless he grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
And the actual person represents, shouting out his place of origin rather than his alma mater, University of Cincinnati, all the scheme by recreation pronounces that embody player introductions.
Which, as that you simply can guess, has irked some fellow alums.
“It’s no longer due to I don’t fancy the time I had at the University of Cincinnati, due to I enact, I take care of it dearly,” Travis said in 2019 when he and gargantuan brother Jason Kelce had been inducted into the Cleveland Heights Excessive College Corridor of Repute. “However there used to be a time after I was at Cincinnati that it wasn't easy for me. It used to be tricky. I bought my scholarship taken from me. I did a entire lot of tiresome things. I'm sure quite lots of different folks on this room know any person from Heights that's done a entire lot of tiresome things. To all my chums, I was that man.”
And the Heights weren't lawful special to him, he persevered, nonetheless “to each particular person up right here. How various this predicament is. It builds something in me. Every single instruct I enact is for this metropolis. It sounds cliche, nonetheless I promise you, each instruct I enact available — must you gaze me dancing in the cease zone, that’s Cleveland Heights, for you, upright there.”
2. About that revoked scholarship…
After the Bearcats' undefeated 2009 season that included a Plentiful East title, Travis failed a marijuana check earlier than the 2010 Sugar Bowl after partying too consuming on Contemporary One year's Eve in Contemporary Orleans.
Not simplest did he leave out the bowl recreation, the NCAA suspended him for the 2010 season and he lost his scholarship. Finding himself with out room and board, he moved in with Jason (actually into his brother's room in the dwelling he shared with some teammates) and took a job as a telemarketer that entailed him asking any person that picked up if they’d tips concerning the Cheap Care Act.
They did, and Travis could perhaps also no longer wait to safe help on the self-discipline.
3. Travis played hockey, baseball and basketball sooner than entering into soccer, and he used to be a quarterback in highschool. Essentially, he used to be a two-star QB recruit for Cincinnati, and simplest ended up switching to tight cease as a condition of his reinstatement to the group after his suspension.
“We had quarterback at the time in Zach Collaros and we needed some abet in the flee recreation to boot to the passing recreation,” Travis told Arrowhead Pleasure after he used to be drafted by the Chiefs in 2013, “so I talked to educate Butch Jones, who used to be my coach at the time, and he said we desire a upright cease and my potential-situation, athleticism and my direction all transferred over and it worked out perfect for me.”
Or, as he put it to GQ in 2017 whereas rehashing his un-intellectual moment, “All americans my entire existence had been telling me I was a upright cease anyway.”
4. The home at 127 W. Nixon St. the attach Travis bunked with Jason and a few fellow Bearcats used to be the scene of a entire lot of beer-infused shenanigans.
The brothers “stale to adore taking half in Nintendo 64 for hours, smashing the controls and chugging beers at the identical time,” college friend and teammate Tom DeTemple told the Contemporary York Events sooner than the 2024 Huge Bowl. “They would lawful give you these random drinking games whereas taking half in, and they had been incredibly upright at it.”
5. And suffice it to claim, Travis is amazingly pleased with being a Bearcat.
“It's all about Cincinnati, toddler,” he told journalists sooner than the 2023 Huge Bowl, which the Chiefs bought to by beating the Bengals in the AFC Championship Sport. “I've repeatedly been extraordinarily prideful of coming from the University of Cincinnati. I at last bought my diploma. I strive to abet out as great as I’m in a position to. I return to the college after I’m in a position to. I lawful leave out being around all these players that I played with, and your entire other folks I met along the model there which fetch repeatedly been in my nook all by the U.S. of americaand downs of existence.”
And when he used to be down in the eyes of the NCAA, he persevered, “The players, the coaches, the workers that used to be at the college at the time—if truth be told believed in me to be ready to flip things around and enact better for myself. That used to be colossal for me at the time.”
6. Nearly a decade after leaving college to enter the draft, Travis earned his diploma in interdisciplinary study in 2022—nonetheless didn't bag his diploma unless April 2024 all the scheme by a shock graduation ceremony after he and Jason taped a live episode of Contemporary Heights at Cincinnati's Fifth Third Enviornment.
The graduate used to be already conserving a can of beer as he approached the dean for his congratulatory handshake, after which he promptly chugged it.
And Travis used to be going to graduate in 2022 nonetheless he missed his flight.
7. Largely resulting from his off-the-self-discipline scheme back, Travis ended up simplest the fifth tight cease picked in the 2013 NFL Draft, going first in the third round to the Chiefs. After which coach Andy Reid, who'd beforehand coached Jason in Philadelphia, requested the elder Kelce sibling to vouch for Travis.
Andy and Travis fetch three Huge Bowl rings to show for Jason's endorsement.
8. His hype music could perhaps even fetch modified since, nonetheless for years Travis listened to Randy Newman's “Burn On” sooner than every recreation.
“I'm an east side of Cleveland small one so rising up, I don't know why, nonetheless this tune brings me help to excessive about family and excessive concerning the attach I am in existence and how great I fancy it,” he said on the NBC Sports podcast PFT Reside in 2017.
Let us sign: It's in the opening credit rating of Main League, the final Cleveland sports film.
9. All americans, collectively with Travis, is mispronouncing his last determine.
Whereas he and Jason fetch lawful gone with Kelce sounding delight in “Kel-gaze,” it if truth be told rhymes with “else.”
Travis' teammate Chris Jones fired off that bombshell on Within the NFL in January—”F–king crazy, upright?”—and the brothers confirmed as great as soon as they confronted their dad Ed Kelce about it on their Contemporary Heights podcast.
“Why on the planet did you change your determine out of nowhere and now we’re Kel-gaze?” Jason requested. “Why did we fetch that our determine used to be Kel-gaze for the key 24 years… 27 years of my existence, 25 of Trav's?”
Ed admitted he “bought drained of correcting other folks” nonetheless entreated his son to “enact whatever that you simply would be in a position to perhaps presumably like.”
10. The No. 87 Travis has oldschool all by his time in the NFL is a tribute to Jason, who used to be born in 1987.
“If there is a Kelce legacy, two brothers making it to the NFL, it started in 1987, which potential that gargantuan man used to be born in 1987,” Travis defined to NFL Movies earlier than the 2023 Huge Bowl that comprises his Chiefs squaring off against Jason's Philadelphia Eagles.
11. Travis' foundation 87 and Running has been a longtime benefactor of Operation Leap forward, a nonprofit discovering out center in Kansas Metropolis that the athlete has worked with since his first consult with in 2015 to study The Cat in the Hat to the formative years.
Yes, reader, he wore the hat.
Since then, Travis has invested in the program's Neat Lab and acquired the oldschool muffler shop subsequent door in bellow that they also can lengthen and manufacture their Ignition Lab, the attach the younger scholars transformed old autos that could perhaps also've ended up on the scrap heap into working electric autos.
12. Travis and Jason name their Contemporary Heights listeners “92 percenters” in reference to Jason as soon as commenting that a play is essential as a quarterback sneak worked “92 percent of the time” when all that you simply would be in a position to perhaps presumably like is one yard to rating a landing.
Fans had been interestingly pretty gratified and most regularly christened themselves the “92 percenters,” basically based fully on the podcast's web enviornment, which likened it to “their secret handshake, nonetheless in phrases.”
Who had been the Kelce brothers to argue with that?
13. Travis has three personal trainers—Alex Skacel, Andrew Spruill and Laurence Justin Ng—and, basically based fully on The Athletic, one in total travels with him wherever he goes to be definite he remains in soccer-catching form all One year round.
Alex, who's furthermore a bodily therapist, recalled Travis desirous to saunter for a dreary night time flee after taking in a slate corpulent of shows all the scheme by Paris Vogue Week due to he missed realizing that day.
“It's hour of darkness, and we're doing sprints over the bridges over the river,” the instructor told the Contemporary York Events in April. “Whatever the attach he is, he finds time to safe done whatever he wants to safe done.”
14. Travis' personal chef, Kumar Ferguson, has been a friend for the reason that fourth grade in Cleveland Heights.
He used to be an newbie cook dinner working as a truck driver in 2016 when Travis called him up and supplied him the opportunity.
“He's delight in, 'Hi there man, I must take my weight loss program seriously, and take it to the following stage,'” Kumar told Arrogance Beautiful in 2023. “I'm delight in, s–t, let's enact it. Three or four days later, I was in Kansas Metropolis.”
He's been guilty for every little thing from stocking Travis' fridge to delivering smartly-balanced lunches to the Chiefs' training facility.
15. Travis' facial hair is below the microscope better than ever now, so he defined on Contemporary Heights that he shaved his off-season beard and saved the 'stache in 2023 as an homage to the walrus gaze most smartly-liked by Andy Reid and made up our minds to repeat in 2024.
16. The $34.25 million two-One year contract Travis signed in April 2024 made him the best possible-paid tight cease in the NFL for the key time in his profession.
Which at last put an cease to years of chatter about how great cash he wasn't making.
“My managers and brokers delight in to command me how underpaid I am,” Travis quipped to Arrogance Beautiful in 2023. “Any time I focus on wanting extra cash, they're lawful delight in, 'Why don't you saunter to the Chiefs and rely on them?'”
However by then, with many other sources of profits having spread out for him, he cared more concerning the vibes than the paycheck.
“I'm delight in, the free market looks delight in fun unless you saunter somewhere and also you don’t procure,” he defined. “I delight in winning. I delight in the scheme back I'm in.”
Seeing other players' colossal paydays “hits you in the gut a small bit bit,” he admitted. “It makes you fetch you’re being taken profit of. I don't know if I if truth be told pressed the gasoline if I could well safe what I’m quote-unquote rate. However I do know I revel in coming to that building each day.”
17. Travis has been into apparel since rising up in Cleveland Heights, the attach his highschool “used to be delight in a potential show daily,” he told Arrogance Beautiful in 2023.
Hence the bedroom he transformed staunch into a closet, the simpler to accommodate his dressmaker threads and better than 300 pairs of sneakers—collectively with a pair of measurement-13 Nike Air Mags that he spent a gargantuan fragment of his rookie One year salary on no matter them being a measurement too little.
“Earlier on in my profession, as soon as they didn't fetch all these sneaker apps,” he defined to the Wall Avenue Journal, “it used to be whatever measurement I could perhaps also safe in the shoe that I needed.”
Whereas he's very great a Nike man (and no longer lawful since the stamp sponsors him), Chuck Taylors furthermore withhold a predicament in his coronary heart due to they remind him of fictional baseball phenom Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez in The Sandlot.
18. Among his dozens of investments, Travis co-owns Ohio-brewed Storage Beer with Jason.
“I fetch everyone knows I delight in to fetch a couple beers now after which,” Travis said in a June commentary, “so being an proprietor of Storage Beer and carefully concerned with making the actual light beer is spicy, man! There might maybe be nothing better to convey other folks collectively than an ice-chilly beer, and for Jason and me that’s what beer is all about—chums, family and fun.”
19. We're sensing a theme through Travis' guilty pleasure TV decisions.
Reduction in the day, it used to be Gossip Lady: “I mean, it's awesome,” he said on Contemporary Heights. “It delight in a Contemporary York highschool show with a entire lot of drama and most regularly all americans gossiping and talking s–t on each other.”
His unusual well-liked show? Peacock's Emmy-winning backstab-a-ganza The Traitors.
20. In his 12th One year in the NFL at 35, Travis has been more starting up of dreary concerning the toll the recreation takes on the physique.
However he's been stoically getting hammered since day one, when he missed his rookie One year with a microfracture in his knee that required the key of the ten surgeries he's had in his profession.
21. Travis put it available, talking on Contemporary Heights about his thwarted strive to present Taylor Swift a friendship bracelet along with his quantity on it when the Eras Tour touched down in Kansas Metropolis.
And after hearing by the grapevine (other folks in her camp who knew who Travis used to be and that he needed to meet her), she contacted him.
“She told me precisely what used to be occurring,” he told WSJ. Journal, “and how I bought lucky adequate to safe her to reach out to me.”
22. One of Travis' well-liked desserts since forever is French toast topped with whipped cream and syrups.
However more neutral neutral right this moment he's change into keen on his lady friend's selfmade Pop-Tarts and cinnamon rolls.
23. Not no longer up to even handed one of Travis' ringtones is Chris Farley shrieking “For the adore of God!” in Tommy Boy.
“I told Taylor that I if truth be told fetch that world, I've bought to introduce it to her,” he told WSJ. The Journal of sharing his affinity for the comedy stylings of Farley, Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell along with his lady friend. “I let her know: Here is my jam upright right here.”
24. After screaming “You've bought to fight for your upright to birthday party!” after their AFC Championship procure over the Bengals in 2019, Travis impressed the Chiefs to starting up taking half in the Beastie Boys tune of the identical determine following every home recreation landing at Arrowhead Stadium.
“It's delight in an energy multiplier. That's consuming to quantify lawful how essential that is,” Chiefs total supervisor Brett Veach told ESPN in 2020. “He performs with that roughly persona, charisma, passion, and he brings other folks along with him. In our building, all americans is chums with Travis Kelce. He is an final energy giver. He elevates all americans's mood, focal point, attention and at the cease of the day, he's aloof fun.”
However the boisterous celebrant who introduced it into their lives admittedly didn't know your entire phrases to the 1986 classic unless he used to be tasked with performing it with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Uncover in February 2023.
25. Speaking of his jams, in Could perhaps also 2024 Travis cited his three well-liked Taylor songs as “Clean Space,” “The Alchemy” and “So Excessive College.”
Asked about it about a months later, on the opposite hand, his retort had modified to, “They're all my well-liked—actually each one.”
However he's on the document asserting in August 2025 that his No. 1 music from The Life of a Uncover Lady is “Opalite.”
26. Comparisons to the Chiefs' legendary tight cease Tony Gonzalez, who retired in 2013 after 17 seasons in the league, started early for Travis.
In 2015, when the chatter about whether or no longer he would, in actual fact, surpass Tony's achievements—and how disappointing it’d be if he didn't—used to be heating up, Travis said he paid the noise no tips.
“Nobody puts bigger expectations on me than myself,” he told Complicated. “I will deserve to fetch basically the most attention-grabbing season statistically that a upright cease has ever had.”
In 2024, Travis surpassed Tony to alter into the Chiefs' all-time leader in receptions along with his 917th obtain.
“It's crazy how things repeatedly come corpulent circle,” Travis said on Contemporary Heights. “Being at the head of the leaderboard with the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs who had been around for the reason that '60s, even handed among the starting organizations that made it your entire scheme in which could perhaps be aloof at their height. And a entire lot of that is thanks to the prosperous historical past they’ve and to a man delight in Tony Gonzalez, who has been a mentor to me. I f–king adore the fellow.”
27. Of Travis' many accomplishments, conserving his condominium in command on his fetch isn't even handed one of them.
“He can't natty,” mom Donna Kelce told Extra in September 2024. “He can't cook dinner.”
However presumably web hosting a special any person served as extra motivation to safe it collectively.
“He's getting a small bit better,” Donna acknowledged. “I fetch he's getting some abet.”
Source credit : eonline.com
