It was a nightmare Super Bowl for the Kansas City Chiefs, which included the worst statistical Super Bowl of Travis Kelce’s career.
Kelce, 35, had only four catches for 39 yards in the Chiefs’ 40-22 blowout loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, February 9. The future Hall of Famer had never caught fewer than six passes in his four previous Super Bowl appearances.
In last year’s Super Bowl victory over the San Francisco 49ers, Kelce had nine receptions for 93 yards. When the Chiefs played the Eagles in the 2023 Super Bowl, Kelce caught six passes for 81 yards and a touchdown. He had 10 catches for 133 yards against the Buccaneers in 2021 and six catches for 43 yards and one touchdown against the 49ers in 2020.
The Super Bowl marked the end of a statistically down year for Kelce, who had regular season career lows in both receiving yards (823) and touchdowns (3).
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Kelce’s underwhelming Super Bowl performance came in front of his girlfriend, Taylor Swift, who lost all six Grammys she was nominated for on Sunday, February 2.
In the days leading up to Super Bowl LIX, Kelce was asked to respond to critics who claimed he had “lost a step.”
“That’s motivation right there, isn’t it?” Kelce said Thursday, February 6 while pounding the podium during his media availability.
He added, “I’ve been eating clean, I haven’t been drinking as much. A little lower on the pounds this week. So hopefully I can run away from some [Philadelphia] Eagles out there.”
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After a slow start to the season, which saw Kelce catch only eight passes for a total of 69 yards during Kansas City’s first three games of the season, the Chiefs tight end explained how he stopped worrying so much about personal bottom line.
“I stopped caring about stats about four or five years ago,” he told brother Jason Kelce on their “New Heights” podcast in September. “I just went out there and started to play free and play for my guys. Sure enough, I think that’s the better mentality. You think about it more play by play and what your job is on that specific play.”
Kelce continued, “For whatever reason, these past two games it hasn’t gone that way for me. That’s football, man. I’m not about to sit here and get frustrated about it. I used to get really, really pissed off and almost lose my cool a lot of the time from not having that success knowing I demand that out of myself. I just like to play the game to such a high level of accountability that it’s tough for me to deal with me being mediocre or having stats that represent that.”
