Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is one of the most talented young players in the NFL at his position, yet too often in the past couple of years his emotions have gotten the better of him.
Most recently, he hurt his team during the AFC Divisional Round against the Pittsburgh Steelers when a personal foul penalty — shoving another player to the ground after the whistle — pushed the Chiefs out of scoring range (watch here).
After the same game, he heavily criticized one of the referees for making a call that was pretty blatant, earning a combined fine of more than $21,000 for his infractions.
These were hardly the first times that Kelce’s hot temper have hurt him and his team, either. He was ejected from a game against the Jacksonville Jaguars after throwing a towel at a ref and has gotten in hot water with the team on a couple of other occasions.
“You just get more comfortable (overall), you get more comfortable around the media,” Kelce said. “You kind of bite your tongue at first, just because you don’t know how everyone is going to look at you. But at the end of the day, it’s a game I put everything into. So if people can’t respect that …”
“I think it’s fair, I think it’s fair,” Kelce said, per Terez A. Paylor of the Kansas City Star. “In terms of maturity, I am who I am. I feel like I do need to understand when to shut the hell up and when to just be me.”
Hopefully Kelce is taking this a bit more seriously that he’s letting on. Because as talented as he is, he’ll develop quite the target on his back if he continues to push the envelope when it comes to acceptable behavior. More penalties means more injury to his team, which is something that certainly is not acceptable for a player who’s going to enter his fifth NFL season in 2017.