ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith gave a stern warning to Travis Kelce about his underwhelming start to the football season.
Following the Kansas City Chiefs game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday, September 15 — in which Kelce, 34, only caught one pass for five yards — Smith, 56, said the superstar tight end should be concerned about his girlfriend getting more TV attention than him.
“We saw more Taylor Swift than we saw Travis Kelce,” Smith argued on the Monday, September 16 episode of ESPN’s First Take. “On a Sunday afternoon. Any other time, that’s applicable. That ain’t supposed to happen yesterday. You’re supposed to see more Travis Kelce yesterday than we saw of her. That’s not happening.”
Through the first two games of the season — both Chiefs victories — Kelce has four receptions for a total of 39 yards and no touchdowns. Sunday’s game against the Bengals marked the first time Kelce didn’t have three or more catches in a game since September 2018.
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“You gotta get it going, bro,” Smith continued. “You got 39 receiving yards in the first two games. Come on now. Football season is here. Honeymoon’s over. Let’s handle our business, OK?”
Smith said it’s a minor miracle the Chiefs are undefeated through the first two weeks of the season, despite Kelce’s lack of production.
He boasted, “You’re not supposed to win that game when something like that happens to you on the offensive side of the ball.”
Kelce and Swift’s high-profile relationship didn’t prevent the tight end from garnering nearly 1,000 receiving yards last season, helping the Chiefs on their way to a second-consecutive Super Bowl.
During a January press conference, Kelce said he and Swift were more than equipped to handle all of the attention that has come their way. “As long as we’re happy, we can’t listen to anything that’s outside noise,” he boasted.
It was a busy offseason for Kelce and Swift, 34, with the NFL star traveling to multiple overseas stops on her “Eras Tour” and the couple having a date at the U.S. Open men’s singles final earlier this month.
Kelce also made some major career moves off the field, hosting the upcoming Prime Video game show Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity? and filming a role in the upcoming Ryan Murphy-produced series Grotesquerie, which premieres September 25 on FX.
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In an interview with CBS Mornings, Kelce said the summer is “a good time to get away from the game of football, to kind of recharge and gear up for the next season.”
Despite his concerns about Kelce’s on-field performance thus far, Smith has a history of supporting Swift being in attendance to watch her boyfriend compete.
“She’s going to support her dude,” Smith said on First Take in January. “To show up at a football game and the cameras are on her — that ain’t her fault!”
The Chiefs return to action on Sunday, September 22 when they travel to Atlanta to take on the Falcons on NBC’s Sunday Night Football.
