Travis Kelce Looking At Another Run Among Top Tight Ends
Ian Hartitz analyzes the Kansas City Chiefs' TE room, focusing on if Travis Kelce can once again be a top-10 TE in fantasy football.
Hard not to like Travis Kelce—at least for those not among the fan bases for the rest of the AFC West. He may go down as the best TE in NFL history. He's got a pretty popular podcast with his brother Jason. He's about to marry the most famous person the planet. Do we need to write in Taylor Swift's name? Kelce will return from his honeymoon to begin his 14th season—and possibly last—for the Chiefs. Does he have enough left in the tank to get back among the top tight ends in football in one last hurrah? Ian Hartitz breaks it down as part of his Kansas City Chiefs Team Preview.
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Is Travis Kelce still viable in fantasy in the year 2026?
- TE1: Travis Kelce (TE10 in Fantasy Life ranks)
- TE2: Noah Gray (TE47)
The best seasons of Kelce's Hall of Fame career are certainly in the rearview mirror, but we did see the longtime stud bounce back in his ability to create yards after the catch last season.
Still, part of that could also be from the Chiefs becoming less reliant on screens to Kelce in 2025 (7.4% of his targets) than they were in 2023 (14.9%) or 2024 (10.2%). There were some ill-timed drops—seven on the season, tied for the most among all tight ends, three of which were intercepted, most among anyone since Tyreek Hill back in 2021—but hey, Kelce ultimately finished as the TE10 in PPR points per game. Not too shabby!
The thing is: The difference between Kelce's average of 11.4 PPR points per game and the TE16 was … 1.1 fantasy points. His per-game counting numbers as a whole continued to decline, and that was with getting a pretty damn good runout with Rice and Worthy's aforementioned issues.
My general draft strategy this year has been first-or-last: We're either investing in one of the top-4 game-changers at the top, or waiting past Kelce and the top-12 options for guys like Dalton Kincaid, Isaiah Likely, Dallas Goedert and Chig Okonkwo, who sure seem to have clearer paths to top-5 goodness in the year 2026.
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