On the newest episode of the “New Heights” podcast with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and brother Jason Kelce, Jason asked Travis for his thoughts on the allegations that Kansas City threw its Week 18 game against the Denver Broncos to keep the Cincinnati Bengals out of the playoffs, and Travis had a colorful but direct response.
“I ain’t scared of [expletive] nobody,” Travis told his brother on the January 8 episode. “I wanted [the Bengals] in the playoffs. I want to slay every dragon one by one, like Mortal Combat. I don’t even want this to be [a playoff format where] we play the lowest seed. Just give me the best teams. AFC, NFC — give me all of them. Mortal Combat style. I’ll go through every [expletive] one of them just giving them my best [expletive] effort. I ain’t scared of a single soul.”
When Jason egged his brother on by saying “You didn’t want to the Bengals in Burrowhead or Cincinnati,” Travis said, “I’ll play them at the Walmart parking lot, I don’t give a [expletive]. We can have our game in the offseason where we really duke it out again.”
Kelce ended his rant about the Bengals by giving credit to them for how they finished the season.
“The Bengals were a fun [expletive] team to watch there towards the end of the season, he said.
Chiefs Loss Bumped Bengals Out of the Playoffs
Kansas City’s loss to Denver in Week 18 eliminated the Bengals from playoff contention. Because the Chiefs lost to the Broncos, Denver clinched the last Wild Card spot in the AFC and removed Cincy from contention despite having already won its matchup against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Saturday.
Based on the shared reactions on social media, there is a belief amongst some fans that the Chiefs intentionally lost so they didn’t have to face the Bengals during the postseason. However, it was going to be very hard for Kansas City to defeat Denver when a number of the Chiefs’ key starters were sidelined for that game and the Broncos needed to win to make the playoffs.
X Users Reacted to Travis Kelce’s Angry Rant
Users on X, formerly Twitter, reacted to Kelce’s angry rant.
“Chiefs weren’t playing starters for any significant time. Den took Cin to OT on the road 1 week ago. Were ppl expecting the backups to win? Would it have lessened the pain for the Bengals had the Chiefs lost in OT? Den is a legit team. Did ppl not watch the 1st matchup? Blkd FG,” one person wrote.
“Cincinnati is 0-3 against Kansas City since they beat us in the AFC championship game which was 4 years ago btw and in half that time they missed the playoffs twice now,” another person wrote. “If the PATRIOTS weren’t scared of them in week 1 why would we be scared of them now.”
“Any fans that truly believe the chiefs just chose to sit every meaningful starter that didn’t need reps (DJ Humphries) to spite the bengals needs to have a reality check,” another person wrote.
