OVERVIEW
In high school, Kelce was a three sport star, but his best sport was always football. He was a three-year letter winner at quarterback, and earned All-Lake Erie League honors after totaling 2,539 yards of total offense and 31 total touchdowns as a senior. Kelce’s uncle Don Blalock played football at Purdue and grandfather Don Blalock played football at Ohio. Travis is the younger brother of former Cincinnati Bearcats and current Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce.
In his first year on campus, Travis redshirted. In his redshirt freshman year, Kelce participated in 11 games as the tight end. He caught one pass for three yards. Kelce also played some quarterback, strictly in a Wildcat role. He logged eight carries for 47 yards and two touchdowns. Kelce did not play in 2010, as he was suspended for a violation of team rules. Upon his return in 2011, Kelce caught 13 passes for 150 yards and two touchdowns. In his senior season, Kelce put himself on the NFL prospect map, as he caught 45 passes for 722 yards and eight touchdowns. He was selected to the All-Big East first team for his play.
ANALYSIS
STRENGTHS Kelce has an ideal tight end frame. Athletic for his size, with great strength, and the ability to stretch the field vertically. Very physical run blocker, generates power from the lower half, and will move defenders off the ball. Plays with leverage. Wide catching radius, can adjust and make the difficult catch. Tough to bring down after the catch. Light feet, and has lined up in numerous different positions.
WEAKNESSES Suspended for an entire season for violating team rules. Only one season of production. Doesn't have blazing speed. Not a tremendously explosive athlete. Doesn't come out of his breaks all that well.
NFL COMPARISON Rob Gronkowski
BOTTOM LINE Kelce has been a tremendous run blocker throughout his career for the Bearcats, but really elevated his game as a receiver in his senior season. He isn't a tremendous athlete, but he does a lot of things very well. It's a deep tight end class, but Kelce's play suggests that he should be highly sought after. [Reply]
Originally Posted by tredadda:
This is very true. I will say that threads like this go to show how wrong some can be when evaluating picks as they are made. I don’t believe this particular thread is any different than almost any other you will read here or on other boards. In some ways it’s like looking at old high school yearbook photos and laughing about how you looked and wondering what you were thinking.
Not trying to be holier-than-thou, but I had some awful Kelce takes in this thread, and yet I've shown more penitence for those opinions than Clay ever has for being anti-Mahomes up until we drafted him. [Reply]
First three picks that year netted us Eric Fisher, Alex Smith and Kelce. The rest of the draft didn’t go so well after Knile Davis, but overall a decent draft. [Reply]
I apparently didn’t post it, but I was pretty salty about him being injured. It was probably justifiable with Moeiaki and Cottam. Nonetheless, That aged poorly. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Buehler445:
I apparently didn’t post it, but I was pretty salty about him being injured. That aged poorly.
Yeah, I had the same injury concerns with him coming out of Cincinnati. I was also concerned that most of his routes were simple - he was more of a straight line, seam guy in college.
Once he worked things out in KC though, he just exploded. Sometimes it's glorious to be wrong. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Spott:
First three picks that year netted us Eric Fisher, Alex Smith and Kelce. The rest of the draft didn’t go so well after Knile Davis, but overall a decent draft.
Smith was a limited QB but was far better than anyone else we had in a long time and he helped Andy right the ship here.
Fisher was no Roaf but he turned into a solid starter for this team and was critical in both the SB win and loss.
Kelce is going to go down as one of if not the best TEs of all time. Not a bad way to start this new era of Chiefs football. [Reply]
Originally Posted by htismaqe:
Let's not get bump happy here.
Every one of us has had a bad take or three. Dredging stuff like this up proves nothing other than some people just can't let things go.
I agree. Though some people post their opinion as if it is the be all, end all and they deserve all the crap they get when they're wrong. At least show a little humility once in awhile. :-) [Reply]
Nothing wrong with a lil necro bump to remind everyone that we don't know everything lol
Personally, I tend to stay out of draftee threads because I don't watch college ball. I won't have an informed opinion other than "I feel like we probably didn't need a player at this position" or "I'd have prefer a player at another position".
I was annoyed for many years about the 2013 draft given the Fisher 1.1 pick, but if you just pretend like we drafted Kelce at 1.1 and took Fisher in the 3rd round, it's not so bad.
Outside of those two, that was a shit draft, though. We got a GOAT TE, a plus LT, and a decent RB2/KR. Other than that it was Staylor's great white hope in Catapano (scrub), Eric Kush, a LB who never amounted to shit (Nico Johnson), and a dude who literally got juked so badly that he broke his ankles (Sanders Commings) :-) Jamaal Charles ended that man's whole career with one cut. I sooooo wish we had that move on film! [Reply]
