It was probably inevitable.
Three months after Travis Kelce’s romance with Taylor Swift took the NFL World by storm, the backlash has started to proliferate.
Kelce, 34, has been mired in a rough stretch as the Chiefs have lost five of their last eight games, and the hot takes are starting to be directed at Swift.
“Kelce is not the Kelce he’s been for the last 20 years of his career,” Craig Carton said on his Fox Sports show on Tuesday. “And I’m not sure if it’s because he’s distracted by the off-the-field stuff which is very public, or for a guy in his mid-30’s, who has talked about ‘my body doesn’t want to take anymore’ that maybe the mind has followed.”
Former NFL offensive lineman Willie Colon, who is also on the show, then chimed in.
“I do think some of the distractions are a factor,” Colon said.
In those last eight games, Kelce recorded just 42 receptions for 443 receiving yards and one touchdown, a far cry from his usual Hall of Fame-esque production.
In the first six games that Kelce played this season, he hauled in 48 receptions for 525 yards and four touchdowns.
“The Chiefs are not a good football team and Travis Kelce looks like he should retire,” Outkick’s Clay Travis posted on X. “He’s been worthless the last seven or eight weeks. The double worthless Pfizer shots may have caught up with him. Either that or Taylor Swift is the Chiefs Yoko Ono. Maybe both.”
Ono, who was married to John Lennon until he was killed, was blamed by many as the reason the Beatles broke up.
Swift attended the Chiefs’ 20-14 Christmas Day loss to the Raiders, and cameras showed her consoling Patrick Mahomes’ wife, Brittany, on the broadcast.
Fox Sports’ “Undisputed” host Skip Bayless was even more direct in his blame for Swift.
“Feels like it’s about time to call Taylor Swift a distraction,” Bayless wrote on X. “What do you think, Patrick? Andy? How about you, Travis?”