The Kansas City Chiefs have cooled down the retirement talks that had been brewing throughout the offseason. Now that Travis Kelce is returning for the 2026 season, he has a lot to prove. However, even before he received a chance to show up, sports podcaster Bill Simmons threw a brutal reality check. 

“Like Kelce, I just feel like I don’t, I didn’t even give him points,” said Simmons on The Ringer podcast. “I think it’s over for him as an impact guy.”

Fans were already doubtful about Kelce making a comeback, thanks to his regressing stats over the years. In his 13-year career in the Chiefs camp, he posted a career-low season in 2024 with only 823 yards in 16 games. Last season was only marginally better with 851 yards in 17 games. Kelce deserves his flowers for headlining a weak pass-catching department, but how much longer can he really go?

Shannon Sharpe also commented along Simmons’ line of thought about Kelce losing his spark. 

“Trav is not the same guy,” Sharpe said on the Nightcap Podcast. “He’s not the same. He’s still a top five tight end. But those days of him just taking the game completely over. I don’t think we’ll see that from him anymore… As you get older, it gets harder. It gets harder to stay like that.”

Travis Kelce will be 37 this October, and it is very plausible that this is his last season in the league. He will, without a doubt, feature in the Hall of Fame someday. But Kelce needs to end his career on a solid note to flip the critics’ narratives. At least for this season, when the Chiefs seem to be placing their bets on a very young receiver core, Kelce will have to do his bit as a veteran.

During the preseason, the tight end created some waves with a catch on the Chiefs’ opening drive against the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks. Kelce connected with rookie quarterback Garrett Nussmeier for a reception, dodging Seattle corner Trevon Diggs, making for an eight-yard gain. However, whether this old-school flair translates to the regular season for Kelce remains a mystery.

Besides standing on loose ground when it comes to what he brings to the gridiron, doubts about Kelce’s future also spike because of the tight end’s life off the field.

Amid all this, Kelce too addressed the possibility of the 2026 season being his last run in the NFL. 

“I think about it every single day,” Kelce previously said during retirement discussion. “It’s a decision that I’m going to have to make at some point.”

Travis Kelce is currently signed on a three-year contract, which works peculiarly. He is expected to make $12 million guaranteed, but the amount is spread out over three years, two of them being void ones. If he wants to play for more seasons, the deal will be renegotiated.

However, Travis Kelce didn’t want to end his career on a bad note, especially not after the 6-11 record last year.

“I think he loves the game,” head coach Andy Reid said on The Rich Eisen Show. “That’s what I think. And he still can play, so those things help. But he surely didn’t want to leave on the year that we had. He made that clear right after the season.”

It’s been an eventful offseason for Travis Kelce too, who got married to Taylor Swift at Madison Square Garden this summer. But apart from making headlines with his personal life, he’s been working relentlessly to make the most of his prove-it season this year.

“You have examples like Kelce, he’s the oldest guy on the team and came out every day and worked to where you had to yank him out of there to give him a breather,” Reid told the press on August 20.

Time to see whether Kelce can find his lost spark and make the doubters take back their words.