The doubts about Travis Kelce were there well before Week 3 got underway.
Through the first two games of the year, the stat sheet for Travis Kelce looked ridiculously sparse. After playing 90 percent of the snaps against the Baltimore Ravens and Cincinnati Bengals, Kelce had only 7 total targets to his name. The official line of 4 catches for 39 yards looked more like what he would earn in an average half of football than one-eighth of a season.
In other words, for a household name with a ubiquitous presence these days in sports and entertainment, Kelce has been nowhere to be found.
Every player hits the wall at some point, but the claims about Kelce being there are coming far too early.
For the last nine years, Kelce has averaged 8.4 targets and 6.0 catches per game. An average season in that time is 93 catches for 1,163 yards and 8 touchdowns. Let's repeat: That is the average stat line for a tight end for the last nine seasons. Basically a decade of brilliance coming into this year in which Kelce was still saying all the right things about feeling good and being hungry and loving football.
Oh yeah, Kelce is also chasing a three-peat.
If you didn't know any better, after just two games of anemic production, you'd think Kelce had come into the season unprepared with a lack of motivation and a goal of just jumping through the hoops in order to fulfill his contractual obligations. Or at least that's how the criticism sounds coming from some people.
Look, Kelce himself would be the first to admit he's lost something athletically at this stage of his career. He can also make up for a lot of that with intellect, experience, and instincts earned after over a decade of making defenses miserable. The lack of production is admittedly frustrating and confusing—no doubt about it—and yet to throw out lazy assertions that someone is "done" or "cooked" or "washed" so soon is irresponsible and unnecessary.
Despite the lack of production, the truth is that the entire Chiefs offense looks a little vanilla at this point. Patrick Mahomes hasn't been "himself" either this year with easy interceptions and clearly missed throws on tape alongside the typical magic we're used to seeing conjured on a weekly basis. The Chiefs aren't even scoring as they should due to red zone concerns. They're also down their WR1 in Hollywood Brown and RB1 in Isiah Pacheco.
But it's also true that Kelce has been open multiple times every game without being seen (or without being thrown to) by Mahomes. It's not as if Kelce can throw the ball to himself, and a few looks he's gotten have been for only a couple of yards at a time.
Kelce showed some signs of life as the second half got underway with a couple of key catches on the opening drive of the half. Still, he finished with only 4 catches for 30 yards on the night, which is bound to bring even more questions to the fore. Kelce can handle them and he'll likely even understand them. But at the very least, a decade of brilliance should have bought him more benefit of the doubt than just three games into an offensively-stifled season.