It's a love story, baby just say yes: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, the couple we need
Travis Kelce made his official return on Sunday and all we can say is he fit back into Kansas City’s offense like a perfect rhyme.
August slipped away, and as good as quarterback Patrick Mahomes is, as the season opening loss to the Lions showed, he needs Kelce, because without him, the castle crumbled overnight. Kansas City brought a knife to a gunfight. The Lions took the crown but it's alright. Then came the Jaguars.
Mahomes is the best quarterback in football. Maybe the best player in the sport. But Mahomes needs his great receiving counterpart. This isn’t to say Mahomes will be asking, "Lord, what will become of me, once I've lost my novelty?"
It is to say that when you look throughout NFL history, some of the best offenses have a formidable one-two punch. They never had bad blood, they always had mad love. Not always. But a lot of the time. There was Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry, Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, Jim Kelly and Andre Reed, among others. Mahomes had that somewhat when Tyreek Hill was with the team but he definitely has it with Kelce.
When Miami signed Hill, Mahomes made it clear it wasn't some situation that needs to be handled. Hill was gone but Mahomes still had Kelce.
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What makes Kelce so good? One word: explosive. His speed and fluidity allow him to run like a receiver and also make it impossible for a linebacker to cover him. Faster corners try, but at 6 feet 5 inches Kelce is often too tall for them. Combo and zone coverages often don’t work either because he’s a skilled route runner. He finds creases in defenses as well as any receiver in the league and his rapport with Mahomes makes things even tougher. Kelce is no Mr. Perfectly Fine.
Defenses, in fact, have a common refrain: Sorry, I can't see facts through all of my fury.
You saw Kelce’s impact against Jacksonville. It wasn’t a huge Kelce day but he did score a touchdown and the focus on him from the defense opened things up for other receivers.
Kelce isn’t just one of the most unstoppable forces in the NFL. He’s one of the most unstoppable in all of sports.
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Defensive coordinators tell their players: you won’t stop him, you can only hope to contain him. Defensive players know it’s true, telling coaches they call up plays again just for Kelce to break them like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest.
It's also fun to watch Mahomes and coach Andy Reid, two masterminds, around them the planets and the fates and all the stars always align. Amazing how they ended up in the same room, at the same time.
You also need to understand, Mahomes might say, why he lost his mind when Kelce was gone, and fought the wars, and why he spent Kelce’s absence trying to put it in words.
What also makes Kelce a problem for defenses is how Reid schemes him open. Reid doesn’t take Kelce’s abilities for granted. Spiderboy, king of thieves, weave your little webs of opacity, because part of the game plan with Kelce is to be as confusing to defenses as possible.
I’m sure Mahomes, when Kelce was gone, and the quarterback was looking back at the Week 1 loss to the Lions, thought to himself: It takes everything in me just to get up each day but it’s wonderful to see that you’re OK.
Kelce is okay. Kansas City is okay. All is right with the world. The team will be back on its vigilante stuff again, for all those who wrote them off after the first week.
And Kansas City fans are dancing in their Levis, drunk under a streetlight. Waiting for another Super Bowl ring.
And if they get burned, well, at least they were electrified.
(Hannah Yasharoff and David Oliver contributed to this story by ranking all of Taylor Swift’s lyrics. They are both untouchable, burning brighter than the sun.)
