Tight ends Gronkowski, Kelce on the front line when Patriots meet Chiefs

There are those who believe that Kansas City's Travis Kelce has unseated the Patriots' Rob Gronkowski as the best tight end in football.

FOXBORO – Has the torch been passed?

If it has, Travis Kelce is likely to catch that, too.

The number of people who believe the sixth-year Kansas City Chief has unseated the Patriots’ Rob Gronkowski as the best tight end in football is rapidly growing.

Just two Monday nights ago, with Kelce in the midst of a seven-reception, 78-yard, one-touchdown game in the Chiefs’ 27-23 victory at Denver, ESPN’s Booger McFarland proclaimed the 6-foot-5, 260-pounder “the best tight end in football.

“No disrespect to Gronk,” McFarland said. “Travis Kelce is the best tight end in football.”

Kelce’s quarterback seconds the motion.

“I know ‘Gronk’ has been a great tight end for a long time,” Patrick Mahomes said during a conference call with the New England media on Wednesday. “I haven’t gotten to play with ‘Gronk.’ I’ve gotten to play with Kelce. I’ve never seen anyone be able to do the things that he’s done.”

The two of them will be under the bright lights on Sunday night, marquee performers when the AFC East division-leading Patriots entertain the undefeated Chiefs in a highly anticipated game at Gillette Stadium.

“I just try to be the best I can be every single week, do my job every single week and the rankings and all that, comparisons, all that I’ll just leave that up to you guys (in the media), whatever you guys say,” said Gronkowski. “But I just try to do my best. I think he’s a great player and I’ve just got to do worry about I can do to help out the team.”

Through the first five games of the 2018 season, Kelce has been targeted a team-leading 46 times by Mahomes as a leading figure a high-flying KC offense that leads the league in scoring (35.0 points per game), catching 28 of those passes for 407 yards and three touchdowns. Over the past four weeks, he’s averaged 10 catches for 100.3 yards per game while scoring all three of his TDs.

Gronkowski, on the other hand, enters this weekend having caught 23 passes in 31 targets for 308 yards and one TD.

The tight end position goes beyond the pass-catching aspect of the game, however.

When it comes to physicality, the advantage has to go to Gronkowski, who is clearly the better blocker of the two. But even then, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick points out that Kelce brings value with the threat he lends to the run-pass option game Chiefs head coach Andy Reid employs.

“They use him on a lot of RPO plays so if you don’t cover him they throw it to him so you have to cover him so it’s better than blocking actually because somebody has to chase him on the RPOs,” Belichick said. “Somebody has to cover him somehow on the RPOs. He’s usually involved in those. Not always, but usually. If you don’t cover him, then they throw it to him. If you cover him, then that’s as effective as him blocking a guy. So they do a lot of that.”

When it comes to durability, the numbers don’t lie, the advantage unquestionably belonging to Kelce (since undergoing microfracture knee surgery in 2013, he’s missed just one game – the Chiefs’ meaningless regular-season finale last year; Gronkowski has missed 12 regular-season and three postseason games during that time).

In the past, the tight end position has pretty much been Gronkowski’s world (five Pro Bowl berths in his first eight seasons), although Kelce – a third-round choice of the Chiefs out of Cincinnati in the 2013 draft – has made a pretty good living in it (three Pro Bowl berths to date).

In each of his four seasons as a full-time player (2014-2017), Kelce has caught a minimum of 67 passes for 862 yards and four touchdowns, his career highs of 85 receptions and 1,125 yards coming in 2016, his high-water mark for TDs occurring last year when he had eight.

“He’s good at everything,” said Belichick. “He’s got good speed, really good after the catch, hard to tackle, good in space, he’s quick, good size, catches the ball well, good balance. He’s a hard guy to defend.”