Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes awed by this Travis Kelce TD: ‘He just does what he wants’
Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s three-yard touchdown reception against the Chicago Bears was much more impressive than it first appeared.
The reason for that was shared by the Chiefs’ social media team Tuesday, as KC posted mic’d up footage of quarterback Patrick Mahomes talking about the touchdown pass with Kelce in the end zone right after it happened.
“I’m glad you saw it,” Mahomes said to Kelce about the play. “I didn’t know if you were gonna do it.”
What Kelce “saw,” it turns out, was Chicago Bears cornerback Elijah Hicks (No. 22) playing him with outside leverage. In essence, Hicks was shading Kelce’s outside shoulder, anticipating that he would run toward the corner of the end zone.
That was a good guess. Because Kelce was supposed to run a corner route, Mahomes said, which would’ve taken him directly into Hicks.
The future Hall of Fame tight end, however, made up his own rules as he went. He shimmied toward the outside to bait Hicks, then cut back inside to the back of the end zone.
Mahomes probably shouldn’t have known this made-up route was coming, he said Wednesday. But he did anyway.
“I just kind of understand what he’s gonna do, some stuff that he’s not really supposed to do,” Mahomes said with a smile. “There was a time in practice where we were thinking about making a call for that, for when we get that look, to get him to run that route. And I remember with the coaches, I just said, ‘I don’t know why we need to call it. He’s gonna do it anyways.’
“So of course he does it, and it’s a touchdown.”
Mahomes said it this way to his teammates on the sideline, via the Chiefs video: “He just does what he wants.”
“The craziest part? I just knew he was gonna do it,” Mahomes says on the video. “I was like, ‘He ain’t running a corner.’”
Kelce also discusses his thinking while sitting on the bench in the clip.
“What’s crazy is I still probably could’ve ran the corner and scored. I had ’em outflanked,” Kelce said. “I was just like, ‘Nah.’”
So how does this type of chemistry emerge, where not only a tight end is changing the play on the fly, but the quarterback is anticipating that he’s going to do that?
Mahomes said that level of trust started to grow in the Chiefs’ Super Bowl LIV victory in 2020. A few times, Mahomes remembers, Kelce adjusted his route, and the QB threw the ball in that location while expecting the modification.
“I think it just took a couple of years of working with him and continuing to do stuff. We got a feel. Not only did I get a feel for how he runs routes, but he got a feel for how I was seeing stuff,” Mahomes said. “And so just that combination of stuff, I think, developed that connection where we can kind of go off the radar screen and develop some stuff that’s not necessarily called.”
That likely happened more than once in Sunday’s game alone.
On Wednesday, ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky posted a video to his X (formerly Twitter) account labeling a second-quarter Chiefs play as “one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen on a football field.”
Orlovsky’s hunch, based on KC’s other receivers, was that Kelce was supposed to run a corner route (sound familiar?). But when Kelce sees a defender who would be in that area, Orlovsky says the tight end turns instead in an open space to look for the football.
Sure enough, Mahomes has already thrown it to that area, completing the third-and-2 pass for a 15-yard gain.
Orlovsky describes the Mahomes-Kelce connection in the title of his video as “absurd and one of the greatest of all time.”
Chiefs coach Andy Reid, for his part, says he doesn’t mind Kelce’s spontaneity as long as he and Mahomes are seeing things the same way.
“When you’re walled (by a defender), we give him some flexibility there,” Reid said before smiling. “He’s had a few of those.”
Mahomes said many people asked him after the game why he was ready to throw the off-script pass to Kelce in the end zone. Heck, one of those people was backup QB Blaine Gabbert, who has played in the NFL for 12 seasons.
The best way Mahomes can explain it? He and Kelce have cultivated immense confidence in each other.
“He has a good understanding of the whole entire concept. He understands the coverages. It takes a lot of reps,” Mahomes said. “And I’ve just tried to develop that trust that whenever I’m seeing it one way, he’s gonna do it that way.”
