{"id":30769,"date":"2025-05-07T10:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T10:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/30769\/"},"modified":"2025-05-07T10:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T10:29:08","slug":"nfl-tight-end-contracts-evolve-after-travis-kelces-record-chiefs-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/30769\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL tight end contracts evolve after Travis Kelce&#8217;s record Chiefs deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last offseason, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/nfl\/teams\/kansas-city-chiefs\/339\" data-autotag=\"e91367c2-d7b8-4bec-9359-95947acd6b0e\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Kansas City Chiefs<\/a> star Travis Kelce held the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/chiefswire.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/nfl\/chiefs\/2024\/04\/29\/kansas-city-chiefs-travis-kelce-agree-two-year-extension-to-make-him-the-nfls-highest-paid-tight-end\/73503950007\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">highest-paid<\/a> tight-end title. Two players have passed him over, continuing to elevate the position.<\/p>\n<p>San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle recently agreed to a $19.1 million per year deal last month to take over the position record. He takes over the title briefly held by Arizona Cardinals&#8217; Trey McBride, who signed a $19 million contract weeks before as the league&#8217;s new highest-paid tight end.<\/p>\n<p>McBride was hard at work developing the next great tight end alongside Baltimore Ravens standout Mark Andrews. The duo held the second annual <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DFlGkvdvgFL\/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Rockin&#8217; Protein<\/a> Tight End Academy last week in Arizona, featuring 30 high school tight ends from 16 schools across the Valley congregating at Westwood High School in Mesa.<\/p>\n<p>McBride <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/chiefswire.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/nfl\/chiefs\/2025\/03\/29\/kansas-city-chiefs-wire-podcast-video-playback-interview-trey-mcbride\/82653836007\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">spoke with<\/a> Chiefs Wire&#8217;s Ed Easton Jr. about Kelce&#8217;s influence on the tight end position earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Travis (Kelce) is a great player,&#8221; McBride explained. &#8220;He does a lot of things very well, but I think something that sticks out to me is his ability to get open and find zones. He&#8217;s not the fastest guy anymore, he&#8217;s not the quickest guy anymore, but he still finds a way to get open and find those zones in defenses. I love watching him play. I love everything that he does. He&#8217;s been such an elite player in this league for such a long time, so it&#8217;s hard not to put the respect on him. But he&#8217;s a heck of a player, a great person.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kelce and Andrews are scheduled to face off again in 2025 as the Chiefs&#8217; and Ravens&#8217; rivalry grows.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last offseason, Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce held the highest-paid tight-end title. Two players have passed him&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[2023,346,739,7,805,110,2016,2022,759,7993,6,2015,500,2340,6042],"class_list":{"0":"post-30769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-andrews","9":"tag-chiefs","10":"tag-city","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-kansas","13":"tag-kansas-city-chiefs","14":"tag-kelce","15":"tag-mark","16":"tag-mark-andrews","17":"tag-mcbride","18":"tag-nfl","19":"tag-travis","20":"tag-travis-kelce","21":"tag-trey","22":"tag-trey-mcbride"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114466086784906638","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}