{"id":252343,"date":"2026-07-10T16:42:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T16:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/10\/chiefs-travis-kelce-gets-bad-news-in-latest-espn-rankings-drop\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T16:42:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T16:42:29","slug":"chiefs-travis-kelce-gets-bad-news-in-latest-espn-rankings-drop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/10\/chiefs-travis-kelce-gets-bad-news-in-latest-espn-rankings-drop\/","title":{"rendered":"Chiefs&#8217; Travis Kelce gets bad news in latest ESPN rankings drop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nfl\/teams\/kansas_city_chiefs\/39\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kansas City Chiefs<\/a> have tight end <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nfl\/players\/travis_kelce\/258644\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Travis Kelce<\/a> for one more season, and then, after that, all bets are off as to whether he&#8217;ll retire. But, at 36 years old, it&#8217;s safe to say that Kelce&#8217;s days are numbered in the NFL. That&#8217;s why he wants to excel this season and end things on a better note than the Chiefs did during the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jIz7kuM_lBU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2025-26 season<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>At 36, Kelce is still an elite tight end. He&#8217;s one of these legacy players, like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nfl\/players\/matthew_stafford\/90657\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Matthew Stafford<\/a> or Tom Brady, who isn&#8217;t letting his age get in the way of his performance. During the 2025-26 season, Kelce played in a whopping 17 games and clocked 76 receptions for 851 yards and five touchdowns, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/players\/travis-kelce\/stats\/logs\/2025\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">according to NFL research<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So, Kelce is still on top, but the latest ranking of NFL tight ends has him falling a bit.<\/p>\n<h2>Travis Kelce falls in ESPN tight end rankings<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nfl\/story\/_\/id\/49267903\/ranking-nfl-top-10-tight-ends-2026-execs-coaches-scouts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jeremy Fowler of ESPN released<\/a> the network&#8217;s tight end rankings on Friday, and Kelce made the cut. The bad news for the Chiefs, though, is that he&#8217;s lower on the tally. Kelce comes in at No. 10 on the list, falling from No. 5 last season.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Kelce is far from a burner at age 36, but it&#8217;s hard to argue with his production last season,&#8221; Fowler notes in the piece. &#8220;His 429 yards after the catch ranked third among this year&#8217;s tight end candidate pool.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He adds that Kelce was in &#8220;better shape&#8221; than he was the previous season, which helps.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s still the ageless wonder at the position,&#8221; an NFC personnel evaluator told Fowler. &#8220;His elite route savvy, body control and instincts allow him to still compete at a high level, despite him getting up in age.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Frankly, still being in the top 10 is a win for both Kelce and the Chiefs. There are plenty of teams out there who wish they could have a tight end like Kelce on their roster.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/plain\" class=\"optanon-category-C0004\">\n    !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n    {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n    n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\n    if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\n    n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\n    t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n    s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',\n    'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n    fbq('init', '1324276914788316');\n    fbq('track', 'PageView');\n  <\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nfl\/articles\/chiefs_travis_kelce_gets_bad_news_in_latest_espn_rankings_drop\/s1_13132_44047585\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Kansas City Chiefs have tight end Travis Kelce for one more season, and then, after that, all bets are off as to whether he&#8217;ll retire. But, at 36 years old, it&#8217;s safe to say that Kelce&#8217;s days are numbered in the NFL. That&#8217;s why he wants to excel this season and end things on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":252344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6806],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-252343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gossip"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}