Chemistry with Patrick Mahomes makes return of injured Travis Kelce vital to Chiefs
Not long after veteran quarterback Blaine Gabbert signed with the Chiefs in April, he had an offseason training question for Patrick Mahomes, the superstar he’s backing up:
How did you know, he wondered, that Travis Kelce was going to run a certain passing route the off-script way he did?
“Man,” Mahomes told him, “I just know.”
That succinctly sums up the precious dynamic between two players on trajectory to be among the best ever to play their positions — an arc multiplied by the way they play together that has convinced their peers they’re two of the five best in the game today.
It also speaks to how discombobulated the Chiefs’ offense was without Kelce in the opening loss to Detroit — and how vital his anticipated return from a hyperextended knee will be on Sunday at Jacksonville, as the Chiefs seek to reset and avoid falling into a 0-2 crater.
Not that this game will define the season or anything, but …
Since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970, according to Stathead, 405 teams have started the season 0-2. Thirty-nine have made the postseason, including the Bengals last season.
That’s fewer than 10% that recover to make the playoffs.
The Chiefs appear above that plight but aren’t immune to it, either, even as they seek to become the first NFL team to repeat as champions in nearly 20 years.
Any way you look at it, this is a pivotal game against a team the Chiefs beat 27-20 at home last postseason — a Jaguars team that would effectively take a 2 1/2-game AFC seeding advantage by winning Sunday.
While the Chiefs figured to be bolstered by the return of defensive end Chris Jones from his holdout, Kelce was the most costly absence against the Lions.
The Chiefs, who led the NFL in points scored and yards last season, were muzzled to nearly 10 points and 100 yards fewer than their 2022 averages in the 21-20 loss marked by some five to seven dropped passes depending on who’s judging.
Devoid of Kelce, without whom Mahomes played for the first time since taking over in the 2018 season, the offense didn’t just lack its usual rhythm, cohesion and safety blanket.
It also was off-kilter from what was being asked of others as the Chiefs weave in several new targets.
That’s why offensive coordinator Matt Nagy spoke on Thursday about the need to find its identity anew every season. And it’s also why Mahomes on Wednesday said that this game is about going out to “prove to everybody, even ourselves, who we really are.”
Whatever that might be, it will be significantly more what we’re used to with Kelce, a four-time All-Pro selection bound for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
For a decade now, we’ve seen what he means to the team when he’s on the field.
Now we know it from the vacuum without him.
And, well, that’s not what you want.
Some day in the next several years, alas, the Chiefs will have to contend with the 33-year-old Kelce’s more extended absence through retirement — for which no succession plan figures to be adequate.
For now, though, get ready for a more pleasant reminder of how essential he is to the Chiefs’ hopes of winning a third Super Bowl in five seasons.
His coupling with Mahomes, after all, stands for something like the rudder or soul of the offense.
The connection has blossomed into a living, breathing organism through time invested on and off the field, their incredible athleticism and a certain natural wavelength that if you’re lucky you might know with a few people in life.
Maybe no one said it better than former Denver coach Vic Fangio did in 2020 when he described them as having “karma between them” and that they somehow even ad-lib on the same page.
Mahomes told that story about Gabbert when I asked the dynamic duo about their chemistry during a Zoom call in June before they beat Steph Curry and Klay Thompson in the made-for-TV golf event, “The Match.”
In his response, Kelce suggested that after all they’ve shared he could almost get into Mahomes’ brain and vice versa.
The implication is that they’re like brothers by now, a point Mahomes accentuated by saying “I feel like his family is part of my family now, and I feel like the same (goes for) him.”
We’ve seen how that translates in dozens of majestic moments over Mahomes’ first five seasons as QB1 — not to mention in their shared antics from golf courses to the White House.
It shows up in neon on such episodes as “Do it, Kels!” — the impromptu call Mahomes made at the line of scrimmage late in the classic January 2022 postseason victory over Buffalo after Kelce pointed out a possible Bills vulnerability between plays.
And that mic’d up sideline exchange between them during the 2021 postseason comeback against Houston en route to winning Super Bowl LIV: “There is nothing telling you I was going to do that,” an incredulous Kelce told Mahomes, “and the ball was in the air before I did it.”
To which Mahomes said, “That’s what I wanted you to do.”
Record-setting as that fusion has been for each, it’s all been such a fluid constant to the offense that maybe it’s been easy to take for granted.
Not that it wasn’t appreciated, because who can watch them work together and not be mesmerized?
But seeing how it translates when Kelce isn’t there illuminates his value in a whole new way.
And his expected return on Sunday is timely as the Chiefs seek to prove even to themselves, as Mahomes put it, who they are now.