To become an NFL star, Travis Kelce had to give up his first love
Before Travis Kelce conquered the world as the Kansas City Chiefs’ star tight end, he planned to be the NFL’s next great quarterback.
NEW ORLEANS — When Butch Jones became the coach at Cincinnati in 2010, he kept hearing the same thing. “Everybody kept telling me probably the most talented individual we had on our team was a kid by the name of Travis Kelce,” Jones said. “But he fancied himself as a quarterback.”
In the 15 years since, over the course of his multipronged ascent to world domination, that Kelce kid has collected many titles. He is the greatest pass-catching tight end of all time, one of the best playoff performers in NFL history, the globally famous boyfriend of America’s most popular entertainer and a three-time Super Bowl champion. For all of that to happen, Kelce first had to shed another title: quarterback.
The superstar with the most playoff catches in NFL history began his football life as a passer. In high school in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and his first two years in college at Cincinnati, Kelce played quarterback. He had a cannon arm, powerful scrambling ability and an aversion to reading defenses beyond his primary target. The position remains part of his DNA, a basis for his telepathic connection with Patrick Mahomes. Quarterback was, for a time, a part of Kelce’s athletic soul he did not want to part with.
“I thought that I was going to be the next best quarterback ever and save the Cleveland Browns,” Kelce said. “I found out that my place in this world was to be a tight end.”
Kelce’s favorite player growing up was Brett Favre. Before the Chiefs played the Bills in the AFC championship game, he said Buffalo’s Josh Allen was the quarterback he always envisioned he would become.
From youth, Kelce was a supremely gifted athlete. “He was the only individual I’ve known in 28 years as a coach that could have been a Division I football, baseball or basketball player,” said Jeff Rotsky, his high school football coach. “And he was good hockey player, too.”
Kelce’s arm strength was extreme — in high school, he could pitch a baseball 92 mph. But his athleticism may have worked against his development as a passer.
“They called me dual threat,” Kelce said. “But I don’t know if I could throw it as well as I could run it. I had a bad tendency of not throwing a hitch because I knew I could pick up five yards with my legs.”
“He was really smart as a quarterback,” Rotsky said. “He understood reading a defense. He understood coverages. But he also understood he was immensely blessed. We told him: ‘You’re 6-5, 240 pounds. If you see an opportunity, tuck that baby and go make people feel you a little bit.’ ”
As a senior at Cleveland Heights High, Kelce rushed for 1,016 yards, not much less than the 1,523 he passed for. His highest honor was being named to the all-Lake Erie League team. He might have been a more renowned basketball player.
Playing quarterback indirectly influenced Kelce’s career path. The recruiting interest Kelce drew as a quarterback mostly came from Mid-American Conference schools. He had a few offers from bigger schools and visited Michigan, but those powers wanted him to play tight end or defensive end. Kelce was adamant about playing quarterback.
Even though his brother, Jason, played at Cincinnati, the Bearcats’ coaches offered him a scholarship only after they saw him play basketball in an AAU tournament on campus. His size and athleticism awed them. They realized they had access to an athlete who, if he played another position, probably would be headed to a bigger program.
“If he had been a tight end in high school all along, his recruitment would have been different,” said Kerry Coombs, then a Cincinnati assistant. “We were fortunate to get him.”
Kelce redshirted his first year under then-coach Brian Kelly. While practicing one day on the scout team, Kelce bypassed an open wide receiver and scrambled. Kelly stopped the scrimmage and yelled at Kelce. On the very next play, Kelce did the exact same thing. Kelly screamed at him again.
“Travis had a big arm, but it was wildly erratic,” former Cincinnati wideout Armon Binns said. “There wasn’t much reading of the defense going on.”
But Kelce was too dynamic to keep off the field. “Seeing how talented he was with the ball in his hands or in space, you just knew that you had to find a role for him,” said Tony Pike, then Cincinnati’s starting quarterback.
Kelce never threw a pass, but he did play quarterback. In his redshirt freshman season, he lined up in a wildcat formation and rumbled on short-yardage plays and near the goal line. He ran eight times, gained 47 yards and scored two touchdowns.
That offseason was a hinge in Kelce’s career. He was suspended for a year after he tested positive for marijuana, a violation of team rules. Kelly left to coach Notre Dame, and Jones replaced him.
Jones listened as staffers told him Kelce was the most talented player on the team. Given his size, speed and hand-eye coordination, Jones saw him as a potential star at tight end. He saw Kelce’s suspension as a silver lining. With a year off, Kelce could learn the position from the ground up.
“Don’t get me wrong; everyone had the idea,” Kelce said. “I was probably the only one fighting it.”
One month after he arrived at Cincinnati, Jones called Kelce into his office. “Hey look, we think your best position is tight end,” Jones told him. “If you want to play in the NFL, this is how you’re going to do it.” Slowly, Kelce relented.
“The biggest thing was him getting over the mental hurdle that he was not a quarterback,” Jones said. “Contrary to what he believes, he was average to below average throwing the ball.”
Jones was certain Kelce could thrive. He even saw a hidden benefit to Kelce’s dearth of experience as a tight end: He had no bad habits to break. His only question was how Kelce would take to blocking. By Kelce’s senior season, referees would approach Jones before games and tell him, “We need you to control 18,” a reference to his jersey number. Jones realized opposing coaches had noticed Kelce’s relentless blocking through the whistle. “I had to smile internally,” Jones said.
Though he had seen himself as a quarterback, Kelce began to fall for his new position.
“I really transitioned into loving the game of football so much more once I got into the tight end position,” Kelce said. “It just suited who I was as a person so much more.”
Kelce’s background as a quarterback has helped make him one of the best tight ends ever to play. His singular ability to find holes against zone coverage traces to his ability to read defenses.
“You wonder, ‘How’s he always open?’” Pike said. “He just understands defenses because he played quarterback. He understands the soft spots in a zone or when to stop a route to help out Mahomes.”
There are smaller clues about Kelce’s football origin. In one of the greatest NFL plays that never was, Kelce launched a perfect-spiral lateral 25 yards across the field to Kadarius Toney for an apparent touchdown — only for an offside call against Toney to wave it off. When the Chiefs run short screens to Kelce, Jones views it almost as a wildcat quarterback run. The Chiefs can use different versions of motion with Kelce because of his feel for timing.
“Some guys wait for the quarterback to bring you in motion,” Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said. “He just kind of knows. There’s little things that sometimes we take for granted that he’s really good at.”
Kelce’s experience as a quarterback remains with him, even if his time playing the position ended long ago. A few old teammates believe Kelce may have succeeded as a quarterback — Pike said he was so talented that he would have been great no matter what he did. Most of them, though, knew his future was elsewhere. Coombs was once asked how Kelce played quarterback.
“Like a Hall of Fame tight end,” Coombs said.
By Adam Kilgore
Adam Kilgore covers national sports for The Washington Post. Previously, he served as The Post's Washington Nationals beat writer from 2010 to 2014
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