Travis Kelce knows that Kansas City Chiefs fans don’t want to hear excuses, and he’s not ready to offer any after his team lost, 27-21, to the Los Angeles Chargers on September 5.
“I know it’s kinda sounding like a broken record from last year’s Super Bowl, but that’s on us as leaders,” Kelce, 35, said on the Wednesday, September 10, episode of his “New Heights” podcast. “I’ll take the most accountability myself. I wasn’t ready that first drive.”
Kelce is coming off, statistically, one of the worst seasons of his career, culminating in a blowout Super Bowl loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in February. He finished Friday’s game with two receptions and a touchdown.
With the sports world watching as the NFL played only its second-ever game in South America, the Chiefs fell behind immediately and Kelce collided with teammate Xavier Worthy on the first drive of the game. Worthy, 22, had to leave the contest with a dislocated right shoulder.
“I literally took one of my players out,” Kelce continued. “That’s one of the most frustrating parts and it’s hard to get your juices back going knowing you just hurt a guy.”
He added, “I was trying to kind of set up my guy to be able to get in position and it all just happened pretty quick. I just gotta be better, man. Thirteen years in the league, there’s no excuse for me running into my own guys like that.”
Next up, the Chiefs face the Eagles in a Super Bowl rematch on Sunday, September 14. Chiefs head coach Andy Reid told the media on Monday that Worthy’s status is still unclear.
“I know Xavier’s the big question, and he’s rehabbing and working his shoulder,” he said. “We’ll just see where it goes day by day here – see where we end up.”
Despite the loss, Kelce had nothing but praise for São Paulo for hosting the game. Though his fiancée, Taylor Swift, did not make the trip, Kelce said he was surrounded by his “football family.”
“I want to just give a huge shoutout to Brazil. The fans down there, everyone that made that thing run, it was just such a unique and cool atmosphere,” he said. “It was a bit of a different experience in terms of getting ready for the game and traveling all the way down there, just the prep and everything we had to go through. But at the end of the day, football is football and the game and atmosphere was absolutely electric.”
