Travis Kelce Cincinnati Bengals Syndication: The Enquirer

The Cincinnati Bengals needed the Kansas City Chiefs to beat the Denver Broncos in order to advance to the playoffs. But after the Chiefs rested their starters, leading to a blowout loss on Sunday, some suggested that the Chiefs were afraid of playing the Bengals and made a strategic move to keep Cincinnati out of the playoffs. But Travis Kelce insists that is not the case.

During the most recent episode of his “New Heights” podcast with his brother Jason Kelce, Travis Kelce had a pretty clear response to anyone suggesting that he and the Chiefs were afraid of the Cincinnati Bengals.

“I ain’t scared of [freaking] nobody,” Travis Kelce said on the podcast. “I wanted them in the [freaking] playoffs. I want to slay every dragon one by one, like Mortal Kombat. I don’t even want this to be like we play the lowest seed. Just give me the best teams.”

The Bengals and Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers have been the only two teams in the NFL to defeat the Kansas City Chiefs in the postseason the past five years.

Over the past several years, there has been quite a rivalry that has developed between the two teams, especially given that both Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow have established themselves as some of the most dominant quarterbacks in the league.

And it sounds like Kelce would be willing to compete against the Bengals any time.

“I’ll play them at the Walmart parking lot,” Kelce said. “I don’t give a [expletive]. We can have our own game in the offseason where we really duke it out.”

All in all, Kelce says he is upset that the Bengals didn’t make the playoffs because he thinks they would have been a fun team to compete against.

“Listen, I love competing against the greatest,” Kelce said. “The Bengals were a fun [freaking] team to watch there toward the end of the season, and it’s a shame they didn’t make it in the playoffs because they would have made the playoffs that much [freaking] crazier and that much more fun.”

The Chiefs earned the No. 1 seed in the AFC and the coveted first-round bye in the playoffs. They’ll obviously have to beat some of the best teams in the league in order to contend for an unprecedented third consecutive Super Bowl, but Kelce wouldn’t have it any other way.

“AFC, NFC, give me all of them, Mortal Kombat style,” Kelce said. “I’ll go through every [freaking] one of ’em, just giving them my best [freaking] effort. I ain’t scared of a single soul, man.”

We’ll have to see how the Chiefs perform in the playoffs.