Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce made a lot of fans very happy when he put off retirement and officially announced he was returning next year for his 13th NFL season.
The 35-year-old Pro Bowler was reportedly on the fence about whether or not to come back next season after the heartbreak he experienced in the Chiefs' 40-22 defeat to the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans a month ago.
"I love playing, I still feel like I can play at a high level, and possibly at a higher level than I did last year," Kelce recently said on his "New Heights" podcast. "… I want to give it a good run. I've got a bad taste in my mouth on how I ended the year."
And while Kelce's desire to run it back and try and help his teammates with their third Super Bowl in four years is admirable, NFL insider Mike Florio thinks Kelce may have made a potentially reckless decision based that he may end up regretting.
"You can't engineer your exit," Florio said on "Pro Football Talk." "There's a chance that next year's exit is going to be worse, not better. Not many guys get to say I went out with a Super Bowl game. … There's a good chance that Travis Kelce is going to exit after this year with something far less than a Super Bowl loss."
Florio even used seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady to further reinforce his point.
Brady won a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020-his first year with the team-and put off retirement in 2021 for another run at his eight championship.
The Bucs went 13-4 that year but lost to the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC divisional round. That offseason, Brady announced his retirement only to call it off weeks later and return for his 23rd season. Tampa went 8-9 and got blown out in the wild-card round of the playoffs.
"I hope [Kelce] doesn't come back thinking that, ‘Hey, we'll just go back to the Super Bowl and win it next year,'" Florio added. "No one is guaranteed the storybook finish, because it rarely happens."
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This story was originally published March 9, 2025 at 3:04 AM.