KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Travis Kelce was supposed to run a corner route.
The Kansas City Chiefs expected man coverage with a Cover Zero blitz from the Los Angeles Chargers on the first play after the two-minute warning Sunday night at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.
“If they had done that, it would have been a great call,” coach Andy Reid said.
Instead, the Chargers broke their tendency and the Chiefs’ play was a bust — or should have been, except Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce remain ruthless competitors with a penchant for back-breaking freelance magic.
“It was a naked (bootleg) with a back on the slide,” Reid said. “They zoned it off and Pat had it in his hands, which is important, and on the move, which is important. He does some good things with that.”
Rather than streak to the corner, when Kelce realized Los Angeles had called the perfect defense to thwart Kansas City’s play call, his future Hall of Fame instincts kicked in.
“That was a play, we were giving Pat the ability to get out of the pocket and make a play with his arm or his legs,” Kelce said. “With that being said, we’ve got to find a way to get the first down. I just improvised a little bit off of the initial route and found a void. Pat was right on cue with getting it to me at the last second.”
It was yet another schoolyard moment for Kansas City’s dynamic duo.
“That play that Pat and Kelce made there at the end was something,” Andy Reid said. “That’s not quite how it was drawn up.”
It was third-and-7 and the Chargers led 17-16 at the time.
The Chiefs were well within field-goal range to retake the lead, but failing to convert there would mean giving Justin Herbert at least 1:40 to attempt his own game-winning drive.
Kelce slid around, found a void nine yards downfield and turned his chest to face Mahomes, who was on a mad dash toward the sideline. He had decided to tuck the ball and run, dipping inside one defender, when he saw Kelce.
“I went through my reads ... and as I went to get ready to run, I saw 8-7 just sitting right there in the middle of the field open, so I fired it right to him,” Mahomes said.
Kelce caught the ball on his knees and the Chiefs bled the clock from there before Matthew Wright's game-winner clinched a ninth straight AFC West crown with the win.
“I’m just trying to get open for him and make his job a little easier,” Kelce said. “... Whatever play comes in, we’ve got to make it rock.”
Mahomes, who finished the game 24 of 37 for 210 yards with a touchdown, chalked up yet another game-winning connection with Kelce to chemistry.
“He plays on the same wavelength that I do,” Mahomes said. “It’s hard to do that. It takes guys time. But it seems like, from the first day, I’ve been on that same page with Trav.”
Kelce turned 35 in October and Mahomes turned 29 in September. The dominance isn’t always there anymore like it was in the tandem’s early days together, but the magic remains as potent as ever when it matters.
“He means the world to me,” Mahomes said. “Without getting too emotional, he’s a guy who has really made me who I am in my career, a true leader on the field. Everybody says security blanket, but someone that I can go to at any moment and he’s going to make good things happen.”
Asked to drill deeper on Kelce’s influence and impact, Mahomes said it’s both professional and personal: “Everybody sees the personality — on the TV and stuff like that — but you don’t see that everyday work ethic that he has,” Mahomes said. “He’s the guy that gets mad when they take him out of practice reps. That’s just the type of work ethic that he has. Even for me, to come into the league and have a superstar player and see him work like that, it showed me that I’m going to have to put that kind of work ethic in if I want to get to that level.”
Kelce finished with five catches for 45 yards, becoming the fastest tight end in NFL history to top 12,000 yards (12,010 yards in 172 games).
“The game’s been around for a couple years, so it’s pretty impressive to do that,” Andy Reid said.
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