Chiefs News 2/10: The Chiefs want Travis Kelce back, plan to talk

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Chiefs hope to have Travis Kelce back for 2026, plan to talk with TE following Super Bowl LX
| NFL.com

The perennial Pro Bowler, who had a resurgent 2025 to reassert his place among the game’s best despite

being 36 years old, has not made a firm decision on his future. However, he has been in touch with his team about a potential return and Kansas City wants him back, sources say.

The plan is to reconvene after the Super Bowl to finalize a plan that works for both parties.

Kelce played out the final year of a two-year, $34.25 million extension last season, so he would need a new deal. The issue now is that Kansas City is significantly over the cap, currently $50 million-plus over the projected cap of more than $300 million. While it’ll be no issue for K.C. to get under the cap, these gymnastics often take time into March.

Kelce has held back from definitively saying he’ll return, but on his New Heights podcast he recently celebrated the return of offensive coordinator Eric Bienemy in a way that made fans believe he’ll be playing.

Kansas City Chiefs offseason: 5 key questions ahead of free agency and NFL Draft | The Athletic

3. Which positions should the Chiefs target in free agency?

Veach has spoken often about his desire to address the team’s overall needs in free agency, ensuring the front office can be more flexible in the draft without being forced to take any particular position.

If that’s the case, the Chiefs should have one glaring, no-question goal on the first day of free agency in March: sign a starting-caliber running back.

The good news? K.C. will have plenty of options to sift through in a strong running back market.

Breece Hall, Javonte Williams, Rico Dowdle, Travis Etienne and Kenneth Walker III are only a few of the names set to be available come March. And given Reid’s recent acknowledgment that the Chiefs need their running game to be more explosive in 2026, landing one of these players early would be a wise use of funds to help address one of the team’s most significant roster weaknesses.

Chiefs DT Chris Jones is calling his shot again with a bold prediction for Kansas City in 2026 | A to Z Sports

“Took a year off, we will be back to it next year!” Jones wrote on Twitter.

Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones has a knack for predicting things

Let’s throw it back to an AFC Championship game where the Chiefs lost to the Cincinnati Bengals, who then went on to lose the Super Bowl to the Los Angeles Rams. During that Super Bowl, in which Jones watched from home, or anywhere not on the sidelines like he’s used to, he tweeted out something spectacular.

“We will be in it next year,” Jones wrote.

Jones missed two crucial sacks in that game and was very hard on himself. He worked hard in the offseason, as did the entire team, and they made that statement come true. However, this time they were beating the Philadelphia Eagles in Arizona.

Around the NFL

Patriots suffer biggest beatdown of season in lopsided Super Bowl LX loss to Seahawks | NFL.com

At one point early in Super Bowl LX, you could easily read Mike Vrabel’s lips: “Calm down,” he said, over and over, addressing his rattled offense.

They were struggling in pass protection, although that wasn’t really anything new. Drake Maye had been sacked 47 times in the regular season and five times in each of the New England Patriots’ previous three playoff games. This was more than that. This was a suffocation, a parade of blitzes using Devon Witherspoon from a Seattle Seahawks team that hadn’t heavily relied on the blitz all season, a pummeling that undid Maye, sending the MVP runner-up into a tailspin that he hadn’t before suffered, at the hands of an all-time defensive performance in the Super Bowl.

The Patriots never did calm down.

And when the dam eventually broke, when Maye was sacked for the fifth time and fumbled, it led to the touchdown that all but put the game out of reach early in the fourth quarter. The final score was 29-13, but it felt much more lopsided than that, like every drive for the Patriots might as well have been 300 yards long. Their first five drives ended in punts. Their sixth ended at halftime.

Then three more punts and a fumble before, finally, a touchdown. Which was followed by two straight interceptions.

Seahawks RB Kenneth Walker III named MVP of Super Bowl LX | ESPN

Walker rushed for 135 yards on 27 carries against the Patriots, adding 26 receiving yards on two catches to become the first running back to win Super Bowl MVP since Denver‘s Terrell Davis in Super Bowl XXXII following the 1997 season. Those 135 rushing yards were also the most by a player in a Super Bowl since Davis.

For the first 30 minutes, Walker was the only player generating offense for either side. He broke runs of 29 and 30 yards in a three-play span to set up Seattle’s second field goal and become the third player in Super Bowl history with multiple rushes of 25-plus yards in a Super Bowl.

By halftime, Walker had 94 yards on 14 carries, the second-highest rushing total for a player in an opening half in Super Bowl history. Only Washington’s Timmy Smith in Super Bowl XXII in 1988 had more (131 yards).

“It’s surreal; K9’s one of one,” Seahawks guard Grey Zabel said. “This guy is super deserving of all the success that he has and is going to continue to have. There’s nobody I’d rather block for than K9.”

Falcons’ James Pearce Jr. arrested after domestic dispute with WNBA star Rickea Jackson | The Athletic

Atlanta Falcons rookie James Pearce Jr., a first-round pick in the 2025 draft, was arrested near Miami on Saturday on charges of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, aggravated stalking and fleeing police after allegedly leading police on a chase before crashing his vehicle, according to arrest records. The chase followed a domestic dispute involving Pearce and Los Angeles Sparks star Rickea Jackson, Doral Police Chief Edwin Lopez told WPLG-TV.

Pearce, 22, faces an additional charge of “resisting an officer without violence to his person,” a Florida charge levied when a suspect allegedly resists arrest but does not hurt any of the officers. Both the battery and stalking charges carry domestic violence designations.

In case you missed it on Arrowhead Pride

Rich Gannon reminisces on the 1997 Chiefs at Radio Row

“I played on a lot of good football teams, I’ve played against a lot of good defenses, and that was a phenomenal defense… all we had to do is not throw up on ourselves, and we would’ve won, and of course, we would’ve won the following week. That was a good football team.”

And that’s the true shame of it all. It was one of the best teams Kansas City ever put on the field, and they squandered a legitimate chance at greatness.

All they had to do was tell Gannon they believed in him and trust him with the keys to the ship.

”That’s the one thing I never got in Kansas City. It was never my team. Carl Peterson and Marty Schottenheimer, they went out and signed Steve Bono after Joe Montana left. Then, after two years of that, they went to sign Elvis Grbac, another 49er guy. No one ever put their arm around me and said, ‘You know what, you’re our guy, we’re going to run with you until I got to Oakland with Jon Gruden and Al Davis.”