Love tap: Kelce, Reid brush off bump, will be back

LAS VEGAS — The partnership between Andy Reid and Travis Kelce will continue for a 12th season, with both saying after the Kansas City Chiefs‘ 25-22 overtime win over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII that they would return for another season rather than retire.

Their relationship went through another rough patch in the second quarter. After Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco lost a fumble, Kelce bumped Reid and screamed in his face on the sideline before being led away by running back Jerick McKinnon.

This wasn’t the first confrontation between the two and probably won’t be the last, given their plans to return to the Chiefs next season. This one was quite vivid, with Reid almost getting knocked off his feet.

He said afterward he appreciated the veteran tight end’s passion.

“He caught me off balance,” Reid said, indicating the contact was worse than it looked. “I wasn’t watching. He was really coming over [and saying], ‘Just put me in, I’ll score. I’ll score.’ So, that’s really what it was. I love that. It’s not the first time. I appreciate him.

“The part I love is he loves to play the game and he wants to help his team win. It’s not a selfish thing. That’s not what it is. I understand that. As much as he bumps into me, I get after him and we understand that. He just caught me off balance.”

Kelce said his emotions got the better of him.

“I didn’t care about my catches,” he said. “I just wanted to … I wanted the score to be different. Coach has asked us to speak our minds and I just wanted to let him know how much passion I had for this team.

“He’s one of the best leaders of men I’ve ever seen in my life. And he’s helped me a lot with that, with channeling that emotion, with channeling that passion. I owe my entire career to that guy and being able to kind of control how emotional I get and just love him.”

The Chiefs polished their legacy by outlasting the 49ers. They are the fourth franchise to win three Super Bowl games in five seasons and the first to win back-to-back Super Bowls in 20 years.

“I know this is one of the greatest teams of all time, to go back-to-back,” Kelce said. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that I’ve been able to go through three times now and it gets sweeter and sweeter every time. You can call us a dynasty. You can call us whatever you want. I know what we’ve got is something more special than really what you’ve seen in the NFL.”

Quarterback Patrick Mahomes polished a legacy of his own, joining Tom Brady and Joe Montana as the only quarterbacks to win three Super Bowl titles and two regular-season MVP awards.

He was only interested afterward about talking about his team’s place in history.

“I hope people remember not only the greatness that we have on the field, but the way that we’ve done it,” he said. “I feel like we enjoy it every single day. We have fun, we play hard and it’s not always pretty, but we just continue to fight to the very end.

“I know [some fans] get fatigue sometimes of one team winning, but we try to enjoy it and just enjoy the moment that we have together and enjoy just kind of what we can do every single day to bring the best out of each other.”