Not only was Sunday a big day for the Kansas City Chiefs, since they came away with their seventh victory of the season in a 19-9 win over the visiting Dallas Cowboys, but it was also a memorable day for tight end Travis Kelce. That’s because their All-Pro pass catcher put up enough production to leap two spots on the NFL’s all-time receiving yards list for his position.
Kelce now sits at No. 5 overall among tight ends in NFL history—history!—in receiving yards with 8,702. On Sunday, he had 5 catches for 74 yards in what was largely a forgettable game by Kelce’s own standards. The totals pushed him over both Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Rob Gronkowski and former Carolina Panthers tight end Greg Olsen.
So far this year, Kelce has 67 catches for 821 yards and 5 touchdowns with six games to play. Even if Kelce sits out one of those games (or even two), he’s a shoe-in to reach the 1,000 yard mark once again by a fair margin (at his current pace, even if he sat the final game of the season to rest, he’d end the year with 1,191 yards receiving). Once he eclipses that total, he will extend his current NFL record for most consecutive seasons with 1K receiving yards with six. No other tight end even has four to his name.
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Travis Kelce is No. 5 on the NFL’s all-time tight end receiving list.
While Kelce just leaped over two other NFL greats, he’s got a ways to go before he reaches No. 4 on the list. If he keeps playing and stays healthy, he’ll hit Shannon Sharpe likely sometime in the second half of the 2022 season at 9,961 yards. From there, the climb gets real steep with Antonio Gates in third place at 11,841, Jason Witten at 13,046, and then (obviously!) Tony Gonzalez with an incredible 15,127 receiving yards in his career.
Kelce has a few things working in his favor to make it up such lists, however. The Chiefs are an offensive workhorse at this point, which means Kelce knows he has Tyreek Hill working besides him, Andy Reid calling his plays, and Patrick Mahomes delivering the football. That’s the reason why he’s reached his total in only 122 career games (Olsen needed 199 and Gronk needed 135 to get to their respective totals).
Kelce, who is now 32 years old, was the Chiefs third-round selection in the 2013 NFL Draft.