Travis Kelce Assigns Blame For Super Bowl 59 Loss

Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs are one week removed from a loss in Super Bowl 59. The Chiefs fell to the Eagles, 40-22, in Super Bowl 59 on Sunday, February 9.

Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley and Co. raced out to a big lead early and never looked back. Andy Reid and the Chiefs were stopped short of a three-peat, while the Eagles won their second Super Bowl in franchise history.

It was a tough loss to stomach for the Chiefs, who had played like the Super Bowl favorite for much of the year. But they couldn’t get things done at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana last Sunday night. ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith is blaming Andy Reid for the loss.

“There is no excuse for a man known for being a damn good playcaller,” Smith said. “This is all-time (bad). Your quarterback, who is considered one of the top two quarterbacks in the history of the game, had a QBR of 1.

I don’t care how bad Patrick Mahomes is, he ain’t that damn bad. On his worst day, he could be better than that. There were contributions, from someone else on Kansas City, to contribute to that performance. And it’s Andy Reid.

“This is going to stick with him for a long time.” Kelce, 35, is going in a different direction with the blame game, though. Kelce is blaming himself for the loss in Super Bowl 59. He admitted that there were several plays early in the game that he regretted. Kelce had just four catches for 39 yards in the loss.

The Chiefs tight end, who might be retiring, also thinks he could’ve been a better leader. Kelce admitted that he “wasn’t the best leader that I could be” in the game to keep his Chiefs teammates “calm, cool, collected.”

The three-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback gave a lot of credit to the Eagles. “It just wasn’t our day. Couldn’t find a lick of momentum,” Kelce said in a “New Heights” episode that was released last Wednesday.

“I’m kicking myself for some of the tiny, tiny decisions I made on the field, trying to do something more than what I asked to do during plays. I wasn’t the best leader that I could be in motivating my guys and keeping my guys calm, cool and collected.

I put a lot of that on myself as, you know, the guy that’s been in the building for 12 years and seen a lot of football and actually seen a situation just like this in the Super Bowl, talking about the Tampa Bay Super Bowl.

“It’s a tough pill to swallow, man. Every time we felt like we made a big play or we got something going, a penalty would happen or we’d be going backwards.

Then, on top of that, just not executing the play calls. It wasn’t the play calls. It was the cumulative effort of everybody just not finding a way to get it done, man. To happen on the biggest stage sucks, but to have it happen for the second time of my career on the biggest stage, man, it’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Kelce and the Chiefs will now look to rebuild heading into the 2025 season.