Kansas City Chiefs: There’s still no tight end depth behind Travis Kelce
The Kansas City Chiefs are fortunate to have the best tight end in the league at their disposal, but the lack of depth behind him is concerning.
Travis Kelce is the best in the biz at the tight end position, but the Kansas City Chiefs haven’t been able to find a suitable backup for him. It’s very obvious five games in that there’s still no solution at the TE2 spot and the Chiefs should thank their lucky stars that Kelce is someone who stays healthy and doesn’t miss games very often (knock on wood please).
The Chiefs signed Ricky Seals-Jones in free agency and that was exciting because he was a proven backup at the position. I even wrote an article detailing why I was optimistic about the team finally finding their TE2. Instead, Seals-Jones has yet to appear in a game for KC after injuring his right leg.
With Seals-Jones unavailable, the Chiefs have given Nick Keizer an opportunity to show what he can do and he’s done nothing so far. Literally nothing. No catches. No yards. Nada.
The biggest chance he had to shine was on Sunday on a key third and long play that he couldn’t haul in. He HAD to make that catch and he didn’t, proving furthermore that Kansas City still hasn’t supplied their offense with a reliable backup tight end.
Travis Kelce is phenomenal, but the Kansas City Chiefs need to find a viable backup option behind him.
The Chiefs offense is explosive, but can you imagine how much more explosive it could be if they could find a legitimate TE2? During the offseason, I flirted with the idea of trading for David Njoku of the Browns, as they had just signed Austin Hooper. It wasn’t a move that needed to be made, but Njoku would give Kansas City a legitimate tight end duo that defenses would have to account for and they haven’t had that in a long time, if ever.
Kelce is as good as they come at the tight end spot, but we saw this past weekend that he and Tyreek Hill can’t carry the team. It’d be nice to have another mismatch option at tight end to pair with Kelce. Maybe Seals-Jones ends up getting healthy and makes a big impact as I hoped he would. Perhaps Keizer starts to figure things out a bit more.
The best case scenario would come after this season and that’s that the Chiefs would finally address their lack of depth at tight end in next year’s draft and or in free agency. It wouldn’t need to be something addressed early on in the draft, as there are bigger needs, but finding a TE2 needs to be a priority this offseason.
Hopefully the Kansas City Chiefs find a stealthy tight end to pair with Travis Kelce because this offense would be unstoppable if they could find the right option.