KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The initial practice week of the Chiefs’ 2025 season concluded Thursday, 85 players in helmets, jerseys and shorts, spread across two fields.

It’s notably good attendance for a workout that head coach Andy Reid never misses an opportunity to remind us is voluntary, and quarterback Patrick Mahomes all but suggested a Super Bowl loss might have had something to do with the turnout.

But I’m going to spend some time here on one of the six players who wasn’t on the field Thursday — a player who happens to be the subject of quite a few conversations these days.

Travis Kelce.

He missed Thursday’s practice, but Kelce did take part in the remainder of the third phase of the organized team activities (OTAs) earlier in the week. And that’s when and where something stood out to his quarterback.

“I know his body feels good,” Mahomes said. “I think it feels better than even last year, before going into last year, just because I think he’s motivated to go out there and have an even better year than he did this past year.”

Between now and September, when the Chiefs travel to Brazil to open the season against the Chargers, a form of that topic is going to emerge a lot, as though Kansas City’s offense will be riding on it:

What kind of shape is Travis Kelce in?

The response matters, to be sure, but another point will be far more consequential: Whatever the shape he is in, Kelce’s place in the Chiefs’ offense must change.

The Chiefs can’t build a scheme expecting some sort of rebirth from a tight end who will be 36 a month into the season, because 36-year-old NFL players don’t tend to have bounce-back seasons.

For the record, I don’t believe the Chiefs will build their offense around Kelce, not initially. This isn’t an education on something they don’t already know. But if he looks a bit fresher and even a bit lighter, it’s the kind of thing that could become tempting for team and quarterback alike. Comfortable, even.

It’s hard to predict much of anything in the NFL — it’s why we’re drawn to it — but we can pretty definitively say the years of Kelce as one of the league’s premier No. 1 options are behind him.

That was evident a year ago, which reached a frustrating conclusion in the Super Bowl that prompted Kelce to want to cuss out his own performance.

But there’s a misconception that 2024 is a down year.

It wasn’t.

To the contrary, Kelce had a historic season, all while setting decade-lows in production.

How are both things true? He had 97 receptions, the most for any tight end age 35 or older in NFL history.

This is what NFL aging typically looks like, and that Kelce avoided signs of it longer than most does not make him altogether immune to its eventual effects. It makes him a Hall of Famer.

Whether he can bounce back to something resembling his prime form is asking the wrong question, because that answer ought to be plainly obvious. The better one to ask: How can he still make the Chiefs better, even at 36, and even if he isn’t what he once was?

His presence at OTAs — OK, even if technically not Thursday — provides the start of an answer. An offseason that began with deliberation over whether he’d come back at all now includes him participating in the majority of voluntary work.

Kelce still practices as hard as just about anyone, still eager to make an impression as though it’s his rookie year. It makes such an impression that Nikko Remigio once showed clips of it to his wife.

At last year’s Super Bowl, passing game coordinator Joe Bleymaier told me a story of Kelce failing to get open on a route twice, and then requesting that Bleymaier inform him how to run the route better.

“Coach me up,” Kelce said on his way to the sideline, a franchise all-time leading receiver in the midst of his 12th NFL season.

That has an impact, albeit immeasurable.

There are the measurable ways too — the yards, the catches, the touchdowns. He can still impact the game, even if not at the same rate.

But the key in all of this? They have other options.

The Chiefs planned to slowly make a transition to Rashee Rice as the top target in the offense a year ago, but then Rice suffered a season-ending knee injury in Week 4. The early returns on his summer workouts are terrific, as though he will be prepared to grab that role once more. These summer workouts are a time to further develop that transition.

After his injury last year, the Chiefs returned to Kelce, because it was most comfortable for the quarterback. It turned the offense predictable. And that’s where this will become not just a Chiefs requirement but a Mahomes requirement too.

Mahomes has operated without Kelce as his security blanket twice in his career.

Twice.

Even if you include those three games to open last season as blueprints that featured Rice more than Kelce, Mahomes has played without Kelce as his No. 1 option just five times.

He will double — even triple — that this season.

He has to.

It will be uncomfortable. The urge will come on third downs, to rely on the habit. That’s where Mahomes and Kelce have always excelled most, even a year ago. Mahomes has always trusted where Kelce will be — trusts that they will read a defense similarly — and fires.

That can still be an option. It should still be an option.

It just can’t be the only option he trusts.

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