Pain of lost rookie season propels Chiefs’ enthusiastic tight end Travis Kelce

Sometime before the Chiefs’ 34-15 win over the Miami Dolphins on Sunday, a handful of Travis Kelce’s college friends offered him a suggestion.

If he scored his first NFL touchdown against the Dolphins, they said, he should celebrate by breaking out his version of the “Shmoney Dance,” a popular dance by Brooklyn rapper Bobby Shmurda that has gone viral in recent months.

“If one person would have asked me, I would have been like, ‘Alright, maybe,’” Kelce said. “But I couldn’t tell you how many people asked me. They were like once you get in there, you gotta hit the Shmoney Dance.

“And I was like you know what? I might as well. All these people want to see some entertainment. I’ll show them something.”

So when Kelce, 24, hauled in a short pass over the middle on Sunday, accelerated to the corner and beat a handful of Dolphins to the end zone, there was no doubt what he was going to do, even if the dance went over some of his older teammates’ heads.

“I had zero idea (what it was) — I’ve never seen anybody do that dance,” fellow tight end Anthony Fasano, 30, said with a laugh. “If I saw somebody doing that dance on the dance floor somewhere, I’d think he had too much to drink or a physical problem or something.

“But I know who Kelce is, so it’s great. I accept it … from him.”

So does Chiefs coach Andy Reid, who encourages his players to let their personalities show on a daily basis.

“You can’t play this (game) without doing that, right?” Reid said. “It’s an emotional game. If you’re trying to be something you’re not, you have a problem. And (if) there’s a problem, you’re not going to get the full genius or whatever person it is.”

Few of Reid’s players have embraced this philosophy like Kelce. He has played in just three games thus far, but already he’s unleashed a season’s worth of enthusiastic first-down signals — and as he showed on Sunday, he has no shortage of touchdown moves, too.

“Once you get in the end zone, you’ve got to do something fun, do something to show you enjoy being in the end zone,” Kelce said. “It’s very special, man.”

Much of that is just Kelce’s personality. Those who know him tout how much he loves the game, and how much he enjoys playing it.

“He’s got a little flair,” Reid said with a grin. “He’s got a little zest to him.”

But at least some of Kelce’s showmanship this season dates back to repressed feelings from a lost rookie campaign last fall in which he was forced to watch his teammates win without him due to a preseason knee injury.

“(I said then) I’m gonna make sure that everybody knows who I am,” Kelce said.

Kelce remembers returning home to Cleveland Heights, Ohio, last November and feeling bummed out.

Everyone was happy to see him, it seemed. It was the bye week, and the Chiefs were a surprising 9-0. People couldn’t wait to talk to him about that.

They also couldn’t wait to ask him why he wasn’t playing.

“It felt like, at the time, the whole city was asking me,” Kelce said. “My answer was just that I got injured; all I could really do is just be a support system to the team. It was probably worse because everyone saw how well the Chiefs were doing and they were wondering where the heck I was.”

Injuries prevented Kelce, a third-round pick last season, from making a significant contribution as a rookie. He caught two passes for 28 yards in the preseason before a bone bruise in his knee sidelined him for a significant portion of camp. He appeared briefly in one regular-season game but was put on injured reserve in October after a microfracture procedure.

Kelce remembers being forced to watch home games from the players’ suite at Arrowhead Stadium, fuming.

“Kind of just observing,” he said, almost with a sneer. “It really was hard watching … unless i’m showing some people around the stadium, I don’t even need to go back to the club level.

“But it really just fueled the fire for this year, that’s for sure. ”

Kelce’s father, Ed, made sure of it. During the middle of the season, he sent Travis a text reminding him that he’d come back from a yearlong absence before — as a redshirt sophomore at Cincinnati in 2010, he missed the entire season due to a violation of team rules — and managed to come back strong the next two seasons, when he caught a combined 58 passes for 872 yards and 10 touchdowns.

“The one thing he said he’s most proud of me (about) is that we persevere through anything,” Kelce said. “He said ‘You can’t hold a Kelce back.’”

Kelce says he still has that text in his phone. It was just one of the things he used as motivation during his rehab leading up to this season.

“From that point, it was kinda just like, ‘Man, I really just want to get out there and make these people from back home proud because I have so much pride in who I am and where I come from,” Kelce said.

Kelce also vowed that when he did return, he’d play every game with the enthusiasm he had in college.

His coach at Cincinnati, Butch Jones — who now coaches at Tennessee — had a feeling that would be a good thing. After growing up in a competitive household with his brother Jason, who plays center for the Eagles, Kelce came to love the game.

“You have to have players in your organization that love football,” Jones said. “Do they need it in their life? Well, Travis Kelce needs football in his life.

“Even when he got injured last year, we would speak quite frequently and he was very upbeat. He’d be like, ‘Coach I’m getting it, I’m coming back, Coach, I’m coming back, Coach.’ He’s very driven right now to be the best he can be.”

Through three games, the 6-foot-5, 260-pound Kelce is the Chiefs’ leading receiver with 10 catches for 166 yards and one touchdown. Eight of those catches have gone for first downs, and Kelce — as was the case at Cincinnati — hasn’t been shy about letting people know about them.

After his first catch of the season went for 27 yards, Kelce popped up off the ground and did a bow-and-arrow first-down celebration. He’s punctuated several more catches with enthusiastic first-down signals, while also making sure he rises to his feet quickly.

This, it turns out, is no coincidence. Jones helped instill that attitude in him at Cincinnati.

“We have a thing that’s called ‘first up,’ where anybody that carries the football for us, that ball holds all of our dreams, goals and aspirations,” Jones said. “So we never lay on the ground — we’re always the first up off the pile. He was the poster player for that ... and sometimes even after he got tackled, he’d get up and he’d still finish the run for 5 more yards and possibly sneak in a first-down call, as well.”

Jones said Kelce started to make a name for himself thanks to his enthusiasm during his senior year.

“Just the intimidation factor of his opponent watching his video the week prior to the game, I thought, was worth it,” Jones said. “He wore No. 18 then, and I’d (sometimes) have an official come up to me and say, ‘Now, Coach, I need you to help me keep 18 under control — I need ya.

“And so right then, I knew we’d gotten in the heads of our opponent because obviously that had to come from the opposing coach. That’s a tribute to him.”

Don’t expect Reid to rein Kelce in, either.

“These guys are the best in the world at what they do, and they’ve all got personalities, and they’re all different,” Reid said. “Don’t try to hide it. Unless it’s going to cost the team penalties, let it play out.”

Kelce should have plenty of opportunities to celebrate going forward. He’s seen his snap count rise every week, and Fasano said he is slowly receiving more responsibility.

“He’s put in a tough position,” Fasano said. “He’s asked to do a lot of things and know a lot of things in our offense. The mental side of the game, his plate is full pretty much every week.”

It will likely be full again this week too, when the Chiefs host the Patriots on Monday night. It will be Kelce’s first prime-time appearance during the regular season, and you can bet he will relish every moment of it — particularly if he reaches the end zone again.

“I dance a little bit,” Kelce said. “I don’t know if I’m going home every single day looking at myself in the mirror dancing it up, but I’ve got a few sneaky moves.”

Kelce broke out the “Shmoney Dance” on Sunday. In the preseason, he did the “Nae Nae” — another popular dance.

He insists he has plenty more moves from where those came from.

“I told everybody on Twitter, I’ve got a whole arsenal of showmanship in my back pocket,” Kelce said. “So whenever I’m making plays, you can definitely expect something to be shown (because) it’s not just (about) passion, it’s something entertaining for the fans to watch because it is an entertainment business.”

This story was originally published September 25, 2014 at 6:37 PM with the headline "Pain of lost rookie season propels Chiefs’ enthusiastic tight end Travis Kelce."