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Travis Kelce Destroyed by ESPN Star Over Bad Locker Room Move After Week 15 Loss

Andy Nesbitt

Travis Kelce didn't talk to the media after last Sunday's loss to the Chargers.
Travis Kelce didn't talk to the media after last Sunday's loss to the Chargers. / Amy Kontras-Imagn Images
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Travis Kelce and the Chiefs suffered a devastating loss Sunday to the Chargers that knocked them out of postseason contention with three games remaining in the season. Making things even worse was the fact that Patrick Mahomes left the game in the final minutes after suffering a torn ACL while scrambling out of the pocket and now faces a long road to recovery heading into next season.

It was a crushing day for a franchise that has been the most dominant team in the league in recent years, having gone to seven straight AFC championship games and winning three Super Bowls.

Kelce didn't share any thoughts with the media after the loss, instead telling them: “It's not the time. I'll catch you guys during the week."

The moment after a game sure seems like the perfect time to talk about it, which many fans pointed out by ripping Kelce for his decision not to speak. The end of a legendary run by the team, Mahomes's brutal injury and Kelce's future in the league were all topics that should have been talked about in that moment. Instead, one of the biggest stars in the league left the locker room without saying anything.

ESPN's Chris "Mad Dog" Russo wasn't a fan of that move by Kelce and tore into during Wednesday's First Take.

"Kelce, after he settles down in the locker room, and he says 'Not today, fellas. Not going to talk to you,' the media. Hold on now. Time out!," Russo yelled into the camera. "You’ve got these poor guys who’ve been covering the Chiefs for years, who go to every training camp practice, every preseason game, every day for seven months they cover the football team and you blow them off at the end of this game when [the Chiefs] got Mahomes out, maybe be the last game [Kelce is] ever going to play. And you can’t give them three words? You can’t give them ‘Terrible day for us. I don’t know what I’m going to do with my career. Hopefully Pat will be O.K.’ when you’re walking out the door and you say not today and you don’t talk to the press? Listen, I know, I understand you’ve got your bother and you’ve got your podcast and maybe you want to save the exclusive news. But no serious sports fan listens to that nonsense anyways. This is a situation here where it’s a Sunday afternoon, we want to hear from you. Mahomes is out for the year, you may not play again. Your season is over. You’ve lost. This is a huge moment in Kansas City and in NFL history and you blow everybody off walking off the field and don’t talk to the press and get in the car? That is wrong. That is not the way to do things. You give them five minutes. You give them a couple of sentences for the Chiefs fans. Really down on him."

Here's that rant by Russo:

Kelce did finally speak about everything on Wednesday and of course that happened on his podcast, New Heights.

“We got three games left ... the integrity of who you are as a professional, as a player, you gotta love this s---, man," Kelce said about the upcoming final three games of the season. "And Chiefs Kingdom, we’re gonna give you everything we got. There’s no question about that. There’s only one way I do things, there’s only one way Coach Reid does things, and if we’re gonna go out there and play some football, we’re gonna do it the right way and keep trying to get these things fixed and end on the highest note we can.”

He also addressed Mahomes's injury:

“First things first, obviously, we lost our quarterback, man,” Kelce said. “Mahomes, our guy, our brother, our fearless leader, our face of the franchise, to an ACL. It’s never easy seeing your guys go down... On a freakish play, to see (Mahomes) go down like that, it f---ing... It was almost like it wasn’t real.“S--- just sucks, man. For a guy that puts in that much and puts his body on the line week in week out... It sucks, man.”

All of that would have been nice to hear on Sunday, though.

Kelce and the Chiefs will close out the year with games against the Titans, Broncos and Raiders. We'll have to wait and see how much he has to say, if anything, after those games.

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Andy Nesbitt
ANDY NESBITT

Andy Nesbitt is the assistant managing editor of audience engagement at Sports Illustrated. He works closely with the Breaking and Trending News team to shape SI’s daily coverage across all sports. A 20-year veteran of the sports media business, he has worked for Fox Sports, For the Win, The Boston Globe and NBC Sports, having joined SI in February 2023. Nesbitt is a golf fanatic who desperately wants to see the Super Bowl played on a Saturday night.

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