If the Dallas Cowboys didn’t put so much emphasis on their NFL Combine interview with Travis Kelce back in 2013? NFL history would have been a lot different.
As hard as it is to believe now, Kelce wasn’t ultra highly-touted entering the 2013 NFL Draft. He was taken in the third round (63rd overall) by the Kansas City Chiefs that year. In fact, Kelce was merely the fifth TE selected in his class.
Kelce served a one-year suspension at Cincinnati in 2010 after a drug test determined that he had used marijuana. This led to one of the NFL’s big-market teams sternly questioning him at the 2013 NFL Combine.
During a recent episode of the “New Heights” podcast that he co-hosts with older brother Jason Kelce (h/t Alex Arend of Athlon Sports), Kelce told the tale of a failed interview he had with the Cowboys at the 2013 Combine:
“At the combine I had some bad interviews. The Cowboys, they were kind of pressing me about having this red flag of missing a year, smoking weed.
I don’t know if I was having a bad morning. I was basically just, I don’t know even know if I want to say this. It ended really fast.
I basically just said if you guys think I’m gonna be that kind of guy or you’re questioning if I’m still that person after everything that I’ve battled through to get to where I’m am now from missing a season, then you guys probably go somewhere else and pick somebody else. And that’s exactly what they did.”
And fortunately for Kelce, the Chiefs and the many haters of America’s Team, the Cowboys took Kelce’s advice and watched NFL history change forever.
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Kelce has made a strong case as the greatest tight end in NFL history, with nine Pro Bowls and three Super Bowl rings on his resume. The 34-year-old has 907 receptions for 11,328 yards and 74 touchdowns, reminding Jerry Jones and the Cowboys what could have been if they had taken a chance on him.
