National Football League

How Travis Kelce continues to dominate at the tight end position at 34

Updated Feb. 1, 2024 2:03 p.m. ET

Travis Kelce has saved some of his best football this season for the playoffs.

The Chiefs star tight end has come up big this postseason, particularly in the last two games. Kelce recorded his first multi-touchdown game this season in the Chiefs' win over the Bills in the Divisional Round, hauling in five passes for 75 yards and two touchdowns in a 27-24 victory. A week later, he recorded 11 receptions for 116 yards in the Chiefs' win over the Ravens, adding a touchdown in the 17-10 win.

Kelce has helped quell any concerns that he's not an elite player anymore after he recorded his fewest receiving yards in a regular season since 2015. He still recorded 93 receptions for 984 yards this season, ranking in the top three among tight ends in both categories, while also adding five receiving touchdowns.

Is Travis Kelce still an elite TE?

FOX Sports' Greg Olsen, who was a three-time Pro Bowl tight end himself, believes there are a couple of reasons why Kelce has been able to remain among the elite at his position for so long. The "clear" reason is due to Kelce's physicality, with Olsen saying he's got "unbelievable quickness" for a player of his size (6-foot-5, 250 pounds) and has unique footwork to be able to start and stop so quickly.

The other has more to do with Kelce's mind.

"Travis Kelce is improvising his routes the vast majority of the time," Olsen said on "The Herd." "I say that as a compliment. Him and [Patrick] Mahomes have a unique understanding that Kelce knows, 'OK, this is the timing of the drop and this is where I'm supposed to get to. How I get there is not as important as being where the quarterback expects me to be at the end of the route.'"

Kelce's improvisation skills appeared to be on full display in the AFC Championship Game, with one of his biggest catches coming on a diving third-down grab after Mahomes evaded the Ravens' pressure for several seconds.

Kelce's ability to improvise at that level makes it tough for defenses to prepare for the Chiefs, especially when they try to replicate what he does with the scout team in practice, according to Olsen.

"For a defense to not really know what that is going to feel like, it's hard to prepare for all week," Olsen said. "The guy caught the ball 2 yards inside the numbers, and that's where I think he's going to be, but that's not where Kelce is going to be. He's going to run to open space.

"It's hard to prepare for guys when the routes are not what we always expect them to be and [they] find space," Olsen added. "If [he's] open, [he] stays open. And he's got a quarterback that can throw the ball from any platform at any moment and the ball is put on him."

As Olsen alluded to, Kelce gets help from his quarterback as well. He said that the Mahomes-Kelce combination are approaching the Tom Brady-Rob Gronkowski connection for the "best connection of all time," if they already haven't gotten there.

The Chiefs' duo actually surpassed the former Patriots and Buccaneers duo for the most touchdown connections by a quarterback-receiver duo in playoff history during their win against the Bills. Regardless of Mahomes and Kelce's places in history, it's evident that they're hard to stop, and it'll be a tough task for the 49ers to do so in Super Bowl LVIII.

"The combination of those two guys, they're unpredictable," Olsen said. "You just can't prepare for them in the conventional way that you prepare for most guys who are running things like it looks on a piece of paper."