The focus of the NFL Scouting Combine is the looming draft and the flood of college prospects who will comprise it. It’s a head start on a free-agency window that opens in a couple of weeks. It’s the chance to finalize an ideal blueprint for the next couple of months.
Or, more simply, the focus of the combine is the future. But as Chiefs general manager Brett Veach navigated the car wash of media points this week here in Indianapolis, the focus of his interviews remained on a player who has defined the past.
Travis Kelce. Will the 36-year-old tight end be part of the future? “I think we’ve kind of taken a different approach with Travis — in the sense that we’ve prepared for either scenario,” Veach responded, adding once, twice and then three times that the Chiefs have had dialogue with Kelce and his reps as he mulls a decision about whether to return for a 14th season in the NFL.
That sounds familiar to what we heard a year ago. It’s not. Well, not completely, anyway. Last year, the conversation about Travis Kelce’s future required just one question: Will he be back?
This year, the conversation is far more expansive. Will he be back? And, if so, at what price? And, if they find an agreeable price, what priority will Kelce have in an offense that needs to improve?
The reverberations pivot on whether Kelce wants to still play. And that might pivot on whether he has the desire to put in the kind of work that prompted a bounce-back season at age 36. Kelce turns 37 in October.
Veach’s classification of the current circumstances — the ongoing dialogue that Chiefs head coach Andy Reid also mentioned this week — implies Kelce must at least be considering coming back.
But there’s a lot more to consider afterward this year. That price, for starters.
Kelce is a free agent after the expiration of a two-year, $34 million contract he signed in April 2024. He was underpaid during the prime of his career, which might sound backwards for someone who spent the majority of those years hugging the top of the tight end pay scale.
But his position’s market didn’t really explode while Kelce was in his prime, because Kelce was the best at the position, and his contract didn’t blow up. It didn’t come close to the neighborhood of what top receivers were paid, even though Kelce operated as the Chiefs’ No. 1 receiver eight times in his career, including six of the last seven seasons.
