Travis Kelce and Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid are seemingly putting their heated sideline moment behind them after the team’s Super Bowl victory.
After winning the Sunday, February 11, game against the San Francisco 49ers, both Kelce, 34, and Reid, 65, were both asked about the now-viral confrontation, with Kelce hinting that he wanted to keep the details under wraps.
“Oh, you guys saw that?” he joked during a postgame interview. “I’m gonna keep it between us unless my mic’d up [content] tells the world, but I was just telling him how much I love him.”
Reid gave an equally lighthearted answer while chatting with CBS panelists after the game. “He keeps me young,” the coach said of Kelce. “He caught me off balance. Normally I’d give him a little bit [back], but I didn’t have [my] feet under me.”
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The incident occurred when Kelce was briefly taken off the field in the second quarter of Sunday’s game. Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco lost a fumble in the red zone, prompting Kelce to bump into Reid on the sideline, who stumbled backward as Kelce shouted in his face.
Reid shed more light on what was said, acknowledging that Kelce’s passion for the game is one of his strongest attributes. “He was really coming over [and saying], ‘Just put me in, I’ll score. I’ll score.’ So, that’s really what it was,” he explained after the team’s victory, per ESPN. “I love that. It’s not the first time. I appreciate him.”
Despite the chatter on social media — Kelce’s outburst was highly debated throughout the remainder of the Super Bowl — Reid asserted that the athlete’s behavior wasn’t “selfish.”
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“The part I love is he loves to play the game and he wants to help his team win. … As much as he bumps into me, I get after him and we understand that. He just caught me off balance,” he continued.
Kelce sang his coach’s praises in a postgame press conference of his own, noting that his emotions got the best of him in the tense moment. “I didn’t care about my catches. … I wanted the score to be different,” he said. “Coach has asked us to speak our minds and I just wanted to let him know how much passion I had for this team.”
He went on to call Reid “one of the best leaders” he’s worked with, adding, “He’s helped me a lot … with channeling that emotion, with channeling that passion. I owe my entire career to that guy and being able to kind of control how emotional I get and just love him.”
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The Chiefs became the first team in NFL history to win back-to-back Super Bowls following their 2023 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles. They are only the fourth franchise to win three Super Bowl games in five seasons. (The Chiefs previously came out on top when they faced off against the 49ers in the 2020 Super Bowl.)
Kelce gushed over being part of “one of the greatest teams of all time” after the milestone victory. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that I’ve been able to go through three times now and it gets sweeter and sweeter every time,” the athlete, who celebrated the win with girlfriend Taylor Swift on the field, told reporters. “You can call us a dynasty. You can call us whatever you want. I know what we’ve got is something more special than really what you’ve seen in the NFL.”
