Father Time catches up to everyone, including record-breaking Super Bowl champions. In what could be his 14th and final NFL season, Travis Kelce came out guns blazing, breaking records, scoring touchdowns and looking like the tight end Chiefs Kingdom had missed in 2025. But right as the team hit 5-0, his troubles began, and they haven’t let up since.
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The Chiefs are coming off back-to-back losses, and the latest injury update has made Kelce’s status a concern ahead of their Week 9 game against the Jets.
“Mansoor Delane, Travis Kelce, Omarr Norman-Lott, Nikko Remigio, and Rashee Rice were limited in practice today,” the Chiefs wrote on X on Wednesday. “Peter Woods did not practice.”
Delane and Rice being limited isn’t a surprise, since both have been nursing injuries for the last few weeks. But Kelce? For the third straight week, the tight end has been listed as limited. The cause is the ankle injury he picked up against the Chargers in Week 6.
Linebacker Daiyan Henley brought him down with what looked like a hip-drop tackle. Henley escaped without consequences, but Kelce is still feeling them. The tackle caught his ankle, and Kelce limped off the field, got it taped and returned to the game, drawing praise from franchise legend Gehrig Dieter.
It didn’t look too worrying at the time. At least, that’s what Andy Reid believed. “(Travis) Kelce tweaked his ankle there; continued to play. He might be a little sore tomorrow, but he did a nice job tonight,” he said.
But that soreness has lasted much longer than a day. Kelce was limited in practice right before the team visited Seattle. He played, but he clearly wasn’t at his best, finishing with four catches for 44 yards in the 20-3 loss.
The pattern continued the next week. He was listed as limited again on the Thursday before Week 8. Despite the ankle, he put together a decent performance in the 28-24 loss to the Denver Broncos, recording five receptions for 67 yards.
Now, Kelce has been limited for the third straight week heading into the Jets game. For an already thin receiver room, that’s a problem. Rice has only just returned from injury, and Tyquan Thornton is sitting on the sidelines. Kelce leads the team in receiving yards (410) and has two touchdowns. He might not be an end-zone threat on every drive, but he has been instrumental in moving the chains.
That’s why the worry for Chiefs Kingdom isn’t whether Kelce will miss a game, but whether the ankle will affect his performance. We’ve seen him play through ankle sprains before, in 2015 and 2023. Both times, he didn’t miss a single regular-season game. That could be the case again this week, with his limited status a precautionary measure.
Either way, the Chiefs will need their best receiver on the field against the Jets, whose pass defense has been excellent this season, allowing just 194.0 yards per game, fifth-best in the league. And Kelce might be the perfect receiver to dismantle it.
After all, Kelce has become the NFL’s all-time leader in receiving yards among tight ends (13,412), surpassing Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez. He also now has the fifth-most regular-season receptions in NFL history. But none of that matters to him as much as winning.
“If you’re not winning football games, man, it’s pointless, man,” Kelce said of the milestones on his New Heights podcast. “It’s such a team game. The individual stuff is cool to look at, but at the same time, if I don’t have Andy Reid dialing these things up, if I don’t have great teammates holding each other accountable, there’s no success at all.”
The Chiefs still have plenty to fix, and Kelce knows it. “The reality of things is we got to fix a lot. The little things, mistakes — and it starts with the person you’re looking at. I’m one of them,” Kelce said. “It’s frustrating. You just can’t f—— do it! Excuse my language. I’ve got to be better for my teammates, and that sets the tone for a lot of people in this room.”
“We’ve got a lot of men in here that give a damn about this season and care about each other. I think that’s a winning formula in itself,” Kelce said. “We’ve just got to go out there and do it.”
The Chiefs face the Jets at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday.