Chiefs were wise to give Travis Kelce a raise

It’s rare for teams to rip up the remaining years on a player’s contract and replace them with more. It’s so rare that there was widespread confusion that Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s new two-year deal was an extension to the two years on his existing deal.

The reality is that, like the Rams did with Aaron Donald two yers ago, the Chiefs ripped up the two years that were left and put two new years in. The Chiefs gave Kelce a $4 million raise for 2024, no strings attached, pushing his salary to $17 million. For 2025, the $17.5 million he’s due to make becomes fully guaranteed on the third day of the 2025 league year.

The seeds for the contract fix were planted during the season, we’re told. Kelce’s representatives communicated their feelings to the Chiefs during the 2023 season.

Those feelings trace to comments made by Kelce to Vanity Fair last summer.

“My managers and agents love to tell me how underpaid I am,” Kelce said at the time. “Any time I talk about wanting more money, they’re just like, ‘Why don’t you go to the Chiefs and ask them?’ . . . You see how much more money you could be making and, yeah, it hits you in the gut a little bit. It makes you think you’re being taken advantage of. I don’t know if I really pressed the gas if I would get what I’m quote-unquote worth.”

He didn’t have to press the gas with a holdout. He said on the New Heights podcast that holding out isn’t his style.

And while there was never any serious talk that he’d retire, the notion that Kelce could graduate to his post-football life had to at least cross the team’s mind. He’s already making a shitload of money away from the field. For $13 million, he could have decided it’s not worth it. For $17 million, he has decided it is.

Although Kelce made a point to emphasize he’ll be with the Chiefs for two years, 2025 falls squarely in the “to be determined” category, on both sides. For Kelce, if he gets offered (for instance) $30 million to star in an action movie that shoots in Bora Bora from August to November of 2025, he’d tap out. For the Chiefs, the three-day window before the 2025 salary becomes guaranteed gives them a window to make a fair assessment as to whether significant slippage has started for Kelce, who turns 35 on October 5.

If the Chiefs didn’t want to at least preserve the option, the 2025 salary would be fully-guaranteed from the get-go. And if this was just a funding issue for next year, the guarantee could have vested immediately after the next Super Bowl.

It’s a clear opportunity for the Chiefs to make an assessment and a decision after the season. Kelce will be doing it, too.

Given the way things have been going for him off the field, opportunity might knock loudly enough within the next nine months for him to answer. And open the door. And exit, stage football.