Travis Kelce says Chiefs will “battle with whoever is on that field”

Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce appeared on PFT Live with Mike Florio and Chris Simms on Monday, talking about the Chiefs as they head into this Sunday’s game against the Green Bay Packers at Arrowhead Stadium.

Florio and Simms wanted Kelce to describe the scene in Denver on Thursday night after Patrick Mahomes was injured while executing a quarterback sneak during the team’s 30-6 win over the Broncos.

”He wasn’t at the bottom of the pile, but he was in the pile — and he couldn’t move,” recalled the All-Pro tight end. “Everybody was kind of just wondering, ‘Why isn’t he getting up?’ Then he pointed at his knee — and it didn’t look like a knee.

“As his brother and his friend, man, I’m a Patrick Mahomes fan just as a person,” he continued. “[In that] moment, I was just like, ‘I hope my brother’s all right. Man, I hope that whatever it is, he gets over it and he gets healthy fast. But let’s go out here and win this game for him — to let him know we’ve got his back.’”

Kelce said that during the game, their biggest job was keeping their composure after Mahomes was injured.

“Afterwards, we were all kind of keeping our fingers crossed that Pat was going to be all right — not only be able to get back sometime soon, but get back healthy and be able to play the game the way he knows how. That’s probably the biggest thing: to make sure we don’t act uncharacteristically. Going forward, everyone just does their job, and we just keep trying to win football games.”

But Kelce said that one of the reasons the team is able to avoid “acting uncharacteristically” is the kind of players the Chiefs have on their roster.

”One thing that’s helped is that [Brett Veach is] bringing in guys with good character — guys that are unselfish [and] that understand the game and that it’s not always going to go our way,” he explained. “He’s brought in guys with the right mentality. That’s helped us even through the past three games where we lost two and had a lot of adversity in this last one. But we play together, man — we play together, we love each other for what it is and we always know we’re going to go battle with whoever is on that field.”

As far as Kelce is concerned, that “whomever” would include veteran quarterback Matt Moore, who stepped in for Mahomes on Thursday night. Kelce said that Moore’s experience would play a large role in whatever success he can achieve until Mahomes can return.

”Believe it or not, at the quarterback position, that means a lot — especially in this offense, where we’re asking the quarterback to do a lot of things,” said Kelce. “I think Matt came in, handled the game correctly [and] finished us off. Moving forward, we’re just going to have to keep chugging along. Like I said, when guys start acting uncharacteristically, that’s when you’re in trouble. We’ve got a lot of great players in this locker room that feed off of each other. I think Matt’s going to come in and do just fine — like he did.”

But Kelce said Moore’s teammates felt that way before he took his first snap on Thursday night.

“You could see it in everyone’s eyes,” he recalled. “There wasn’t a hiccup. There wasn’t anyone tripping over their feet. As soon as Matt came in, he said, ‘Listen, we got this.’ And everyone rallied with him. Matt Moore can dice it up. If we move forward and have to win a few ball games with him, I have all the confidence in the world we can do that.”