As you’ve surely heard by now, Super Bowl LV will play host to a fascinating quarterback matchup between the legendary Tom Brady and the ascendant Patrick Mahomes.
It’ll also feature arguably the two best tight ends of this generation in Tampa Bay’s Rob Gronkowski and Kansas City’s Travis Kelce.
Gronkowski is probably the greatest all-around tight end in NFL history. By the time he retires, Kelce could hold the crown as the best pure pass-catcher ever to play the position.
There was obvious mutual admiration between the two when they spoke Monday at virtual Super Bowl Opening Night.
“I’ve got nothing but major respect for Travis Kelce,” said Gronkowski, who noted, among other positive attributes, that Kelce has “helped the tight end position get paid.”
“… One thing that’s very intriguing with Travis Kelce — and I’ve never really seen this with any other player in the NFL ever before — is that Kelc gets better every single year that I’ve seen him play in the NFL. And that’s just respect right there.”
Gronkowski dubbed Kelce “the best player on the Chiefs’ offense,” ranking him over Mahomes and wide receiver Tyreek Hill.
Kelce called Gronkowski “unbelievable,” saying “his dominance fueled me to be able to have that much impact in a football game.”
“(He’s) going to go down in history as one of the best players that have ever played this game,” the Chiefs star said in a video conference. “… I might be one of the biggest Gronk fans out there.”
In the last decade, tight ends have tallied 1,000-plus receiving yards 22 times. Gronkowski and Kelce have accounted for nine of those seasons (four and five, respectively). Greg Olsen has three. No one else has more than two (though George Kittle went back-to-back in 2018 and 2019 before missing most of this season with an injury).
In the later years of Gronkowski’s New England Patriots tenure, debates raged over whether he or Kelce was the more valuable tight end. Nowadays, the answer clearly is Kelce, who ranked second in the NFL in receiving yards (1,416, the most ever by a tight end), fifth in catches (105) and tied for fifth in touchdowns (11) this season while Gronkowski played a comparatively minor role in the Buccaneers’ offense, posting a 45-623-7 line on 77 targets. Kelce was targeted 145 times.
But how do their respective careers compare? Here’s a statistical breakdown:
| Gronkowski | Kelce | |
|---|---|---|
| 131 | Games | 111 |
| 566 | Receptions | 612 |
| 8,484 | Receiving yards | 7,881 |
| 86 | Touchdown catches | 48 |
| 4.3 | Catches per game | 5.5 |
| 64.8 | Yards per game | 71.0 |
| 15.0 | Yards per catch | 12.9 |
| 9.7 | Yards per target | 9.2 |
| 65.0% | Catch percentage | 71.2% |
| 3 | Super Bowl titles | 1 |
Kelce already has more catches than Gronkowski despite playing 20 fewer games and could pass him in yards next season. He has better per-game averages in both categories and also has caught a higher percentage of his targets. And since the 31-year-old has been much more fortunate in the health department, he should have several seasons of top-end production left in him with Mahomes as his quarterback. Kelce hasn’t missed a game due to injury since he was a rookie in 2013; Gronkowski, who’s six months older, just completed his first 16-game season in nine years.
Gronkowski has the edge in yards per catch and yards per target and holds an absolutely enormous advantage in touchdowns, nearly doubling up his K.C. counterpart. (Since entering the NFL in 2010, Gronkowski leads all NFL players in touchdown catches.) He’s also a far superior blocker.
Patriots fans have long pointed to that final fact as the clear separator between the two players. In his prime, Gronkowski was an elite receiver and an elite blocker, while Kelce always has been more one-dimensional — a phenomenal pass-catcher but not someone who can be counted on to clear out a defensive end.
“I’ve played against Kelce, and I’ve thrown him around like he’s a little doll,” former Patriots edge rusher Rob Ninkovich said in 2018. “The guy doesn’t want to block. When you’re a tight end and you don’t want to block, you’re not really a tight end.”
But perhaps we should stop using the same rubric to grade Gronkowski and Kelce. Because despite what the roster says, they essentially play two different positions.
Of Gronkowski’s 973 snaps this season, 855 have come as a traditional in-line tight end, according to Pro Football Focus snap count data. He’s played 76 snaps in the slot, 39 split wide and three in the backfield.
Kelce has played 1,017 snaps. Of those, 445 were in-line, 323 were out wide, 220 were in the slot, 26 were in the backfield, two were on the O-line and one was as a Wildcat quarterback.
Gronkowski was significantly more versatile earlier in his career — he typically played around 350 slot snaps per season with the Patriots — but he never lined up out wide on more than 22.9 percent of his snaps. He’s topped 15 percent just once (2015). Kelce was split wide from the Chiefs’ formation on 31.8 percent of his snaps this season.
From a usage perspective, Kansas City has used Kelce as a blocker on 33.1 percent of his snaps since the season began. Gronkowski’s career low in that category is 39.9 percent (also 2015). The ex-Patriot has been above 45 percent in seven of his 10 seasons, including each of the last four. In both his final season in New England and his first in Tampa Bay, he ran routes on fewer than half of his snaps.
Patriots coach Bill Belichick never refers to Kelce — a former quarterback who switched positions in college — as a tight end. In his eyes, Kelce is “a big, athletic receiver” — “one of the best receivers in the league,” as Belichick called him before a Pats-Chiefs game in 2019, but a receiver nonetheless.
Kelce actually agrees with that characterization to an extent. But in the modern NFL, which continues to tilt more and more toward the passing game, he doesn’t view it as a negative.
“I mean, I’m sitting here and I listen to everybody tell me I’m a wide receiver,” Kelce said Monday during a lengthy response about Gronkowski’s influence on the tight end position. “I’m like, ‘Call me whatever you want to call me.’ I’m a football player that’s out there being accountable for his teammates. I’m doing what my coaches and my team ask me to do, and that’s just try and win my matchups when presented them.
“To be honest, I think Gronk is more that traditional tight end where it starts in-line. He’s a very good blocker — one of the best blockers that we’ve seen in this game — and he’s transitioned into (a role where) blocking helps him get open in his specific offense. Whereas in my offense, I’m split out a lot, and I’m more of a wide receiver or a receiving tight end in that regard, and I get up to the second level when I am asked to block.
“I think with those two different styles of tight end, it really depends on the offense that you’re running and what you need to get done. There’s so many different ways a tight end can be used out on the field just because of how athletic we are and how physical we can be in the run game and the pass game. That’s why I love the position.”
Kelce leads all NFL pass-catchers this postseason with 21 receptions for 221 yards and three touchdowns. Gronkowski has two catches on seven targets for 43 yards in the Bucs’ three playoff wins.
