Travis Kelce and Brother Jason Co-Star on Sports Illustrated's Daily Cover
Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce shared Tuesday's Sports Illustrated Daily Cover with his brother, Eagles center Jason Kelce, as the Super Bowl-winning brothers shared stories about their experiences together as players and as brothers.
Sports Illustrated's Robert O'Connell profiled the, as he called them, "most accomplished siblings in the NFL." It's an easy case to make, as Jason and Travis now both have Super Bowl rings on their resumes.
For the full story, click here. Any Chiefs fan should check out the full piece. But if you're saving the full read until later, here are three of my favorite takeaways from the story.
1. Both Kelce brothers started at positions they no longer play
We knew that Travis Kelce played quarterback in high school and definitely shouldn't be playing QB in the NFL, but Jason also switched spots early in his career.
At Cleveland Heights High, neither played the position he would eventually star in as a pro: Jason was a linebacker, Travis a quarterback. In the winters, Travis played basketball and Jason hockey. Ed claims both boys’ best sport was baseball. Asked for a comparison for Jason, he replies, “You heard of Thurman Munson?”
Jason walked on as a linebacker at Cincinnati, transitioned to O-lineman and earned a scholarship. Slotting in alongside future NFL blockers Jeff Likenbach and Trevor Canfield, he helped push the Bearcats to their first three double-digit-win seasons in school history. “He was a wonderful example of effort, intensity, and passion: for the game, for his teammates, for victory,” says Kerry Coombs, Cincinnati’s defensive backs coach at the time. “If you’re going across the street and getting in a fight, you’re taking Jason with you.” Travis, the more eye-poppingly athletic of the two, followed his brother to UC two seasons later as a wildcat quarterback and tight end.
2. Jason pushed to get Travis brought back on the Cincinnati football team after being dismissed
In 2009, at the end of Travis’s redshirt freshman year, he failed a test for recreational drugs before the Sugar Bowl. When Butch Jones arrived to coach the team the following year, he dismissed Travis from the program, citing a need to overhaul the culture. His housing revoked, Travis had nowhere to live, so Jason brought him into a place he shared with teammates. Travis spent the 2010 season administering phone surveys, gauging public support for the Affordable Care Act. Donna took out loans to pay for his textbooks.
Coombs remembers Jason walking into a coaches’ meeting that season, tears in his eyes. He was there to stake his substantial reputation on getting his brother back in the fold, and he came armed with a straightforward argument. “Basically, it was, I’ve got this, and you’ve got to trust me on this,” Coombs says. “You’re talking about a man who had earned the right to give his word and have his word listened to.”
“I never really asked him how he got me back on the team,” Travis says. But he returned for his junior season in 2011 as a full-time tight end and made the dean’s list that fall—“which was unheard of,” according to Ed. In ’12, Travis broke out, catching 45 passes for 722 yards and eight touchdowns; the following spring, the Chiefs drafted him in the third round. “That was my brother just being a big brother,” Travis says, “looking out for me every step of the way and fighting for the success story.”
3. Both brothers, both drafted by Andy Reid, have a lot of love for Big Red
The 21st-century NFL has produced two dominant traditions. The first is Bill Belichick’s, built on well-guarded institutional knowledge, unbending doctrine and a taste for subterfuge. The other is Andy Reid’s, which favors high experimentation and low 40 times. Reid picked Jason in the sixth round of 2011 and coached him for two seasons before Chip Kelly took over; four years later, Reid protégé Pederson picked up where his mentor had left off. In Reid’s first year in Kansas City, he selected Travis. On that draft day, Reid reportedly asked Travis to hand the phone over to Jason. “Is he gonna screw this up?” Reid asked. Jason told Reid what he told the staff at Cincinnati: “No, Coach, I got you.”
The Kelces are quick to defend each other’s skill sets—Jason maintains that Travis, never celebrated for his blocking, could be as effective as the 49ers’ George Kittle if required—but they admit that the Reid school fits their shared football sensibility perfectly. “What makes Belichick a great defensive coach is what makes Reid a great offensive coach,” Jason says. “The best coaches find a way to utilize guys’ skill sets and talents. I don’t think that I’m necessarily an unbelievable player for every offense, right, but I have a great skill set, and when [Reid and Pederson] utilize that, I can be a very successful player.”
Travis, who over his career has gone from K.C.’s primary receiving threat—in his second season he caught five touchdowns; the team’s wide receivers caught none—to one in a cadre of downfield targets, refers to Reid’s offense as a kind of football nirvana. “Every summer, I’ll just pop my head into Coach Reid’s office to say hello, and he’s got a four-inch stack of notecards,” Travis says. “He’s just licking his chops, like, I can’t wait to install these babies.” In the fourth quarter of a close game against the Lions last September, Travis caught a 12-yard pass over the middle and, as he was being tackled, lateraled the ball to running back LeSean McCoy, who scampered for an extra 20. It was the sort of risky play that coaches tend to reprimand, even when they work out, and Travis worried about Reid’s response. “After the game,” Travis says, “he just looked at me: ‘Imagine doing that the whole game.’ ”
