Travis Kelce jokes he took page from Taylor Swift in teasing return to Chiefs

Pete Grathoff, The Kansas City Star on Mar 10, 2026

Published in Football

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It didn’t take long for tight end Travis Kelce to realize he wanted to return to the Chiefs for the 2026 NFL season.

While on “The Pat McAfee Show,” Kelce spoke Tuesday about his motivation for playing a 14th year in the league, all with the Chiefs.

Retirement was never really on Kelce’s mind.

“I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty short and brief,” the star tight end said about deciding whether to retire or play again. “And the Chiefs knew where I was the entire time on it. I think you always need to take a step back. You always need to take a step back, breathe, let the emotions of the season settle down, and see where the body is and things like that.

“But, man, I’m still in love with this game. I still love going to work, putting on the pads, grind in and out, and just, you know, playing the game and and I think the my best opportunity was playing for the Chiefs yet again and running this thing back with Pat Mahomes and coach (Andy) Reid and got my guy, Eric Bienemy, Coach Bieniemy back. There’s a lot of pieces in Kansas City that I just absolutely love, and I can’t wait to get back in the building with him. I’m pumped.”

Kelce turns 37 in October and had said little publicly about his future following the 2025 season.

Learning from Swift

McAfee noted that Kelce had dropped a hint about his return in January, shortly after the Chiefs brought back Bieniemy as their offensive coordinator.

“I can’t wait to see him back in the building, man,” Kelce said at that time while on his New Heights podcast. “He’s one of my favorite coaches of all time, one of my favorite people of all time.”

Fans took that comment to mean Kelce would be back, and not retire after a 2025 season that fell short of the playoffs.

While talking with McAfee on Tuesday, Kelce joked about taking a page from his fiancée, Taylor Swift, the superstar singer who loves giving her fans Easter egg clues.

“The thing is, once I started dating Taylor, I started understanding what Easter eggs were,” Kelce joked, “and you start kind of just placing those all over the planet, and everybody starts to catch on.

“Yeah, that was a slip-up. I didn’t realize I said that.”

Although Kelce playfully mentioned Swift about his accidental mention of returning, he did talk about how she influenced him.

“We share the same love for what we do, and fortunately we’ve had this desire since we were kids in our selective professions,” Kelce said of Swift. “It’s amazing to see her keep going to the table, keep finding new things to write about, keep finding new melodies and, on top of that, still seeing her have that love and joy in what she does.

“Of course that’s motivating. That’s motivating for anybody to see, let alone my fiancée, knowing that I’m going through something where I’m trying to figure out exactly what the future holds for me. Something like that definitely motivates me to say, ‘You know what, I’m not done, either.’ I’ve still got some ideas in the back of my mind and still got some juice left to play this game.”

‘A lot of dog mentality’

Kelce admitted he is not quite in football shape at the moment.

But he, head coach Andy Reid, quarterback Patrick Mahomes and their teammates are motivated following a 6-11 season.

“I’ve been having a few too many Garage Beers right now, never too many,” Kelce said. “But, you know, I need to get back into the gym and really hunker down and get back to the craft, man. I think, I think the biggest thing was coming back was that we’ve got to be even hungrier than we’ve been before.

“And talking to Pat, talking to Coach Reid and the guys, there’s a lot of dog mentality right now to get this thing fixed and then that mentality itself is already kind of motivating me to get to where I need to be during the season.”