Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce had a chance to secure his ninth consecutive 1,000-yard season with just 16 receiving yards on Sunday night. Instead, with the team’s playoff seed already clinched, Kelce decided to sit out and rest for the betterment of the team to protect himself from injury ahead of the playoff run.
During his weekly appearance on 610 Sports Radio, Patrick Mahomes had some pretty high praise for Travis Kelce after his selfless move.
“That speaks to the type of teammate that he is,” Mahomes said on the show according to Pro Football Talk. “In all honesty, I was trying to force him to play, like I was trying to make him go out there because I knew he was going to try not to play, and he wanted to be about the team and not about him. I was trying to force him all the way up until game time, and then he said, ‘No, that’s not who I am. I don’t want to play for those reasons. I want to get myself healthy and ready for the playoffs.’
“A lot of guys would have done that and went out there and did it, and there’s no slight towards them. But the type of teammate Travis is, he couldn’t do that because he knew it wasn’t about him; it was about the team.”
It was a pretty unselfish move from Kelce, and it’s clear that Mahomes respected him for it.
