Travis Kelce Calls Out KC Chiefs’ Doubters: ‘It’s Only Building That Beast'

Fourteen weeks into the NFL season, it's a well established fact that the Kansas City Chiefs' current offense isn't the same group it was a year ago. That has been made pretty clear for quite some time now, although causes of the shortcomings remain multiple.

The majority of blame from the outside has fallen on the play of Kansas City's wide receivers. Stemming from and at least somewhat connected to that, however, are elements like quarterback play, play-calling decisions, offensive line performance and coaching. Despite that, wideouts like Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Skyy Moore, Kadarius Toney, Justin Watson and more have caught a lot of heat this year. Many believe it's warranted, although tight end Travis Kelce certainly doesn't.

Kelce, speaking on this week's episode of the New Heights podcast with his brother Jason, expressed that he's tired of the hate. Calling out those who are doubting Kansas City's skill players, the future Hall of Fame pass-catcher doubled down on his belief that the Chiefs have everything needed to win a championship.

"I know there's a lot of media pointing fingers at some of the skill players that we have... I say f— that," Kelce said. "Excuse my language — we usually cuss in lighthearted ways, but I feel like you guys had to feel that. Whoever's talking s— on the skill players and our offense right now, man. It's a group effort and when you turn the film on, what's real is that we've got guys that can play this game. We've got guys that we can have success with and win with and win championships with. I know it, I've been on championship-caliber teams. When you watch the film, penalties in critical moments, turnovers in critical moments. It's everybody. It's not one guy; everybody's getting a piece of the pie."

Kelce also alluded to the team's ongoing process of figuring out its identity, as much as he thinks it "kind of sounds like a broken record at this point." He thinks the criticism is only serving as motivation.

"All this that I hear in the media about who the Chiefs are, it's only building that beast that we've been trying to create this entire year," Kelce said. "It's only going to keep making us better and better going through these learning experiences and going through these tough games. In years past, yeah, we found ways to win these games. And I think this year, we're finding ways to keep getting better every single week. At the end of the day, it just takes a lot of focus, man. A lot of focus on the right things and just being accountable for the guy next to you and just executing your f— job. I'll be the first one to say I've got to play better."

Through 13 games, the Chiefs' offense ranks 11th in scoring and seventh in yards. With that said, it's one of the worst clubs in the NFL when it comes to turnovers and penalties have also been a problem. That's without even mentioning drops, another massive culprit on that side of the ball. It's not all doom and gloom — Kansas City ranks sixth in dropback EPA per play on the year — but recent weeks have seen varying results. At this point, though, there still isn't a ton that folks can consistently count on in terms of positives.

An example of that was this past weekend's game against the Buffalo Bills. Late in the game when the Chiefs had a chance to drive down the field and tie or take the lead, a touchdown was eliminated by a Kadarius Toney offensive offsides penalty. Kansas City couldn't recover from it, eventually losing by just a field goal. That added more fuel to the fire of blaming receivers, but Kelce thinks he was also at fault. With a Week 15 game against the New England Patriots approaching on Sunday, now's the time for everyone to get back to work and continue honing in on the finer details.

"I was more pissed that we still had two timeouts, second-and-15," Kelce said. "Thirty seconds, 40 seconds left, that is a lot of time to put up a field goal. That is a lot of time to get into the red zone. That was what we harp on when we rewatch film, when we're looking at it, when Coach (Matt) Nagy is standing up in front of the offense talking about how we're going to fix this problem. What's real? What's real is we still had a chance. I didn't play my best after those two plays, and I wish I would've played better. From that point, you go to work today, tomorrow and the rest of this week to try and fix it. If you get put in situations like that in the future, which I'm sure we will, we're ready and we know how to attack and how to f— win that football game."

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