Anyone who saw the pregame portion of Sunday’s AFC Championship game saw video of Ravens kicker Justin Tucker and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce interacting.
Tucker was practicing field goals on the Chiefs’ side of the field during pregame warmups, as is permitted by NFL rules, and was working right where Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes was attempting to warm up.
Mahomes subsequently stated in a radio appearance that Tucker was simply “trying to get under our skin.” Kelce, on his podcast New Heights, disagreed and pushed the issue further.
“I love how I’m being painted as the bad guy in this,” Kelce told his brother, Jason.
“But it’s always — if you’re attempting to enter the other team’s designated area, you kind of keep out of their way. Do you know? Travis remarked, “You don’t interfere with what they’re doing.”
“That is the unwritten rule.” If you want to be a f****** dick about it, keep your helmet, football, and f****** kicking tee near the quarterbacks’ warming up area. And they’re plummeting, staring to the left, with a helmet at their feet.” “It’s actually kind of dangerous,” Jason explained.
“Like if you’re not going to pick that up, I’ll happily move that for you,” Travis went on to say. Travis mentioned Tucker’s reaction later, when he was downplaying the incident. “I mean, he was kind of winking at me, being a dick about it, trying to get under the skin,” Travis told me. “I understand it. What about me and Pat? We’ve had the same mentality about this game all week, man. And it was a case of, you had to go in there with the appropriate mindset, and we weren’t in the mood to joke. We were prepared to go after it.
“So, Justin, sorry if we took it to a level that you didn’t think it’d get to that way, but if you’re going to be a d***, I promise you, I can one-up you every time, dude.” Jason also mentioned that Tucker is known for this throughout the league.
“He’s a legendary kicker and he knows how to poke the buttons,” Jason went on to say. “He does it. Other kickers and punters will also do it. You know, it’s clearly unwritten that you get out of the path of the opposing team when they’re attempting to use the field. When it is appropriate, you find a means to work on the opposite side of the field. That is part of the game within a game. You can tell he’s having fun in these videos by his facial expressions; he understands what he’s doing.
“He got under your skin, and listen, it worked,” Jason explained. “It got under your skin but it worked the wrong way because it was the record day for the Yeti.” It may have backfired for Tucker, as Kelce caught 11 passes on 11 targets for 116 yards and a touchdown, breaking Jerry Rice’s postseason catches record.
