The first time that Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce connected for a postseason touchdown wasn’t notable, beyond the remarkable and historic scoring barrage it started. The Kansas City Chiefs didn’t win that game, an AFC championship matchup against the New England Patriots. New England limited Kelce to three catches for 23 yards. But firsts are firsts, and early in the third quarter, trailing 14–0, Mahomes followed a long pass with a slant to his favorite target. Kelce caught the ball and fell into the end zone inside frigid Arrowhead Stadium, toppling the first domino in a string of dominoes far longer than anyone expected.
The connection that would surpass all other playoff duos from this decade and this century—not to mention any decade or any century—wasn’t obvious like now, not at first. But looking back, it was pretty obvious then, too.
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Before Mahomes took over as the Chiefs starter in 2018, Kelce played in four neither-bad-nor-remarkable playoff games in Kansas City. In the six postseason runs since, the duo that “dynamic” fails miserably to capture has combined for 118 completions/receptions, 1,435 yards and an NFL record 16 scores. The Chiefs still have at least one more game in this run, maybe two, starting Sunday at the Baltimore Ravens in their latest AFC championship appearance. And the above tallies come from 16 playoff games; not quite a full season, even.
It’s dizzying, the dynamic of the duo that’s far beyond dynamic. Otherworldly maybe. Impossible to comprehend. They’re likely to bolster all totals in future seasons. Mahomes and Kelce are superb at home, averaging 7.9 connections, 89 yards and 0.92 touchdowns in 12 (!) postseason games; they’ve only played once together on the road, last week at Buffalo, combining for 75 yards and two critical scores; and they’ve starred on neutral fields, in three Super Bowls, averaging 7.3, 85.7 and .67 in the games that matter most. Two of which, by the way, they won. They’ve dominated in the divisional round (with averages of 8.7 connections, 103.3 yards and 1.3 scores) and posted as many multi-touchdown games with just each other (4) as times when defenses kept Kelce from scoring.
To say the Chiefs’ success over those six seasons starts right there, with the young, how-did-he-do-that quarterback and his trusty, colorful, pop-star-dating tight end, is an understatement of epic proportions. Without Mahomes to Kelce, the Chiefs aren’t recent two-time champions. They’re probably not Super Bowl entrants. They certainly don’t turn a 2022 season that began amid heightened uncertainty after the Tyreek Hill trade into last February’s triumph. And they certainly aren’t still hanging around this postseason, when many predicted that all the consequences of success would finally catch up with Kansas City.
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I asked Mahomes about their pairing last February, roughly 10 days before the Chiefs won Super Bowl LVII. He started typically, by praising a teammate, describing Kelce as someone who “enjoys life, you see him everywhere; he’s at all these different sporting events, and he’s celebrating—he’s celebrating everything.” Mahomes then pivoted into more substantial matters: work ethic, drive, motivation to embarrass defenders in practice. “You see a Hall of Fame tight end, one of the greatest players who catches passes of our generation,” he said. “Of all generations, really, and this guy gets after it.”
Hence the history, which ramped up in their second postseason together. In early 2020, KC fell behind the Houston Texans, who appeared primed for an upset. The Chiefs didn’t just come back; they obliterated the Texans, hanging 51 points on them after falling behind 24–0. Many would describe the climb back as a miracle. But it was more a projection of everything else to come.
The barrage came with KC down, 24–7. As the first half wound to a close, Mahomes found Kelce not once, not twice, but three times … for touchdowns in a span of under eight minutes of game clock. There was the crossing route, the pass slung low and into traffic, nestling into Kelce’s arms. And the out route, with Kelce stopping near the right sideline and Mahomes wiggling away from pressure, both extending the play long enough for a gap just wide enough to fit the pass through to finally open. And there was the scramble-scramble-scramble, this pass short-armed over a defender’s shoulder.
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The trio of TDs spoke to chemistry and talent and two superstars who work like they’ve never scored before. This duo combines size (Kelce), arm strength (Mahomes), speed (Kelce), more speed (Mahomes, specific to his throws), unusual arm angles (Mahomes), atypical route running (Kelce), telepathy (both), countless hours of extra practice (both), experience (now both, but primarily Kelce), guts (both) and guile (both). Add it all up and that’s how the Chiefs duo not only arrived at their place in postseason lore but early enough to shatter the previous mark, held by Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski—an elite among elites duo in their own right.
“Those guys don’t miss,” Reid told me last February. “It trickles down. They’re demanding. They show up. I mean, Travis is just going to be out there as long as he can be. And everybody knows that, well, he’s not the youngest.”
Facts. Even the joke. The pairing took off in the playoffs that started with the Texans comeback (2019 season, games held in early ‘20). Together, they led Kansas City to its first triumph in half a century. The next postseason (2020 season, games in early ’21), they led KC back to the season’s final game before losing to Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers—and, in an instance of dynamic duo-on-dynamic duo crime, watched Brady and Gronk combine for two Super Bowl scores. Still, after only three playoff runs together, Mahomes to Kelce had already netted 60 connections, 698 yards and eight touchdowns. They were halfway to history already.
Brady and Gronk, meanwhile, were all but done.
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Right away (2021 season, playoff games in early ’22), Mahomes to Kelce added to their totals, falling short of a Super Bowl but registering touchdowns No. 9 (their longest in the playoffs, at 48 yards), No. 10 (maybe their most special, a game-winner in overtime, to win the 13 Seconds contest) and No. 11 (just before collapsing against Cincinnati in the conference title game) together.
The next year, with four runs together under their belt, Mahomes to Kelce bolstered not just their own dynamic but their team’s fortunes. They invited the rest of the skill position players to Fort Worth, where Mahomes trains in the offseason, then held an install without any coaches present beyond Mahomes’ private QB mentor, Jeff Christensen. There, they taught a group of new and, in many cases, young specialists how to play offensive football the way they did. Another title resulted, in part from that trip.
“They have to be the greatest combination ever,” Christensen told me before LVII. “By far, I think, they will wind up as that, the best partnership in the history of professional football.”
He’s not wrong, especially on near and somewhat distant horizons. There’s no current pairing like them in the NFL, no threat to the record they own and are all but guaranteed to break and break (and break again). There’s little to no reason beyond age and motivation to continue grinding that Kelce, 34, will retire any time soon. And the Kansas City offense, while obviously down this year, isn’t likely to stay that way forever.
The natural inclination here is to compare Mahomes to Kelce with Brady to Gronk. But while the Patriots/Bucs duo certainly staked a significant perch in postseason football history, there’s really no comparison, already. Brady and Gronk played in 22 postseason games together, combining for those 15 touchdowns. But Gronkowski wasn’t featured nearly as often as Kelce, and the Patriots didn’t throw, in most instances, nearly as much.They didn’t need him nearly as much. Gronkowski had four postseason games with more than 100 receiving yards; Kelce already has six (and counting), with three others over 90.
“He’s special, man. He’s a special player,” Mahomes told reporters after his tight end set a Chiefs record with 14 receptions against the Jaguars in Jan. 2023. “One-of-a-kind player, that’s one of the main reasons we’ve been able to be in this position so many times.” That same night, as Chad Henne filled in briefly for an injured Mahomes, Kelce was the intended target on 49% of the Chiefs’ passing plays.
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Last Sunday, then, was special. But not nearly the point. A culmination that wasn’t a culmination at all. Pundits predicted the Chiefs would lose, finally, to the Buffalo Bills, deep into a season where their typically turbo-charged offense had sputtered to nearly a complete stop. But there was Kelce’s brother, Eagles center Jason, whipping Arrowhead into a frenzy by removing his shirt as he held a can of beer and celebrated. There was Kelce, after scoring a second-quarter touchdown, forming a heart with both hands and seemingly directing the gesture at his girlfriend, Taylor Swift.
Together, as always, Mahomes and Kelce ensured that this strange Chiefs season would last another week. That KC would play in another conference title game, their sixth-straight. That history would be made, so it could be eclipsed. They even caught Brady’s attention.
“BEASTS,” the seven-time champion tweeted. “When you one up Gronk, you’re doing something right.”
Not to mention Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, who connected for 12 postseason touchdowns. It was a lot, and it was expected, and the point was never to pass Brady and Gronk in anything other than Super Bowl championships. Consider that the next target for two men who are never not on target. Brady and Gronkowski lifted five Lombardi Trophies overhead on the same nights. Their Chiefs counterparts have some work ahead of them. But they’ve already proven capable of a level beyond dynamic.
