If you look at his receptions and yards, they're roughly halved over his average three-game start to an NFL season throughout his career. He has just eight receptions for 69 yards, but his average is around 16 receptions over 200 yards and a score. Some people have blamed his personal life and Taylor Swift , others say he's out of shape or that father time has finally caught up to him.
Those in the building know that defenses have emphasized trying to take Kelce away by bracketing him and playing softer coverages. It has allowed Kelce into a tertiary role, opening up other options in the offense given the attention he's receiving. Speaking with his brother Jason Kelce on the latest episode of the New Heights Show, Travis addressed the scrutiny about his play and his thoughts on everything to this point in the season.
"Whatever it is. It's football, baby. I'm not getting caught up in getting the targets and all that," Travis said. "I just want to have a successful offense, and I think Pat's doing a great job of finding the open guy and making the right decisions right now. And we just have to keep finding -- it's a new offense, new players, new pieces, and we're just finding how to have success throughout the season. As an offense, you're going to go through these ups and downs throughout the season, and you just want to make sure that you clean up all the mistakes that you're you're making, make sure that you're communicating so that everybody understands exactly where we're going moving forward. And nobody does it better than Coach (Andy) Reid and Pat Mahomes."
Everyone should have known that this is the type of response that Travis would give. Just last season, Travis had his first sub-1,000-yard receiving season since 2015 . He needed just 16 yards in Week 18 to reach that number, but he opted to take the week off instead to get his body rested for the playoffs. He put his team first , which he's always done throughout his career and will continue to do so long as he's playing.
"I've had a lot of catches in this league, man," Travis explained. "I'm not worried about, you know, the catches and the yards and all of that. I have the most fun when I get the ball thrown my way. Who doesn't? I mean, it has everything to do with execution, just making sure we're doing whatever we can to win these football games, man. And that's always going to be the goal."
Jason got a little choked up at this point, expressing frustration over the unfair criticism his little brother had received from media members. He said things would turn around so long as he kept being the person he had always been. Travis, again, responded by putting the team and winning first.
"And if it doesn't, as long as we're winning football games, we're good to go, baby," Travis said.
"We're 3-0, man, it doesn't get any better than a 3-0 start."
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