Travis Kelce is expected to break down his decision to keep on playing in the NFL on Wednesday in the latest New Heights episode, filmed in-person with his older brother Jason.
There was genuine belief that Kelce, 35, would call it a day after the emphatic loss in the Super Bowl in New Orleans in February, where the Philadelphia Eagles beat his Kansas City Chiefs 40-22.
After agonizing over the decision, Kelce confirmed last week that he wasn’t prepared to bring the curtain down on a glittering career after such a heavy loss. But Wednesday’s episode is his first opportunity to speak at length about the decision.
He appeared back to his usual light-hearted mood in a 30-second clip shared by the New Heights social media accounts on Tuesday night.
Asked by brother Jason if his own retirement from the Eagles last year inspired him to play on, Travis laughed and said: ‘No, I actually think you’ve handled it perfectly, Jason.
‘You’ve thrived, outside of missing a Super Bowl. I think you absolutely killed it, dude.’
Jason laughed off his brother’s remark before calling him ‘a f***ing d***’.
‘Yeah well, that’s the only way I can have fun with it,’ Travis replied.
Kelce stopped short of addressing his future in the immediate aftermath of the Super Bowl, saying only in the locker room: ‘Hats off to the Eagles, man. We couldn’t get it going offensively.
‘We just couldn’t find that spark, couldn’t find that momentum. I think there was a lot of things going wrong.
‘Everything was not really going our way today. You don’t lose like that without everything going bad. We haven’t played that bad all year.’
Kelce was very coy over his future in the immediate podcast episode of New Heights days after the Super Bowl – if anything, he sounded like a man on the way out.
‘I know everybody wants to know whether or not I’m playing next year, and right now I’m just kicking everything down the road. I’m kicking every can I can down the road,’ he said.
‘I’m gonna take some time to figure it out,’ he continued. ‘And I think I owe it to my teammates that if I do come back that it’s gonna be a wholehearted decision and I’m not half-a**ing it, and I’m fully here for them.
‘I think I can play, it’s just whether or not I’m motivated or it’s the best decision for me as a man, as a human, as a person to take on all that responsibility.’
Judging by the short clip on Tuesday night, Kelce looked refreshed and back to his old self.
It was unclear where the brothers filmed the show but it looked like they had a new studio to record in, with vinyl records placed in the background.
