Longtime NFL QB Ryan Fitzpatrick retired this past week after 17 years in the league.
A seventh-round draft pick by the St. Louis Rams out of Harvard in 2005, Fitzpatrick played for a number of NFL franchises during his career including the Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals, Tennessee Titans, Houston Texans, New York Jets, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Washington Football Team. Spending such a long time in the NFL and across so many different teams, you’d expect that Fitzpatrick would know most players around the league. While that’s the case for most players, it wasn’t the case with one particular Kansas City Chiefs player.
Speaking with ESPN reporter Adam Schefter on his podcast in a recent post-retirement interview, Fitzpatrick and Schefter discussed the story of how Fitz met Chiefs TE Travis Kelce.
“The night that we were together, Patrick Mahomes walked into where we were — or was it Travis Kelce? It was Travis Kelce and I said, ‘Oh there’s Kelce’ and you were like ‘I’ve never met him!’ And I couldn’t believe that you’d been in the league as long as you have and that you know as many people as you do and you hadn’t met Travis Kelce,” Schefter exclaimed. “Like that’s amazing to me, I thought you knew everybody.”
Fitzpatrick responded by explaining that he actually is quite close with Kelce’s older brother, Jason Kelce, who plays center for the Philadelphia Eagles.
“I know Jason Kelce very well,” Fitzpatrick said. “I brought him to my barber in Tampa and we got the beards trimmed together.”
The night that Schefter brought up, Fitzpatrick actually met Kelce and spent some time with him — playing beer pong — which only seems right for these two legends of the game.
“But after that night and a few games of beer pong, I know Travis (Kelce) very well,” Fitzpatrick said. “He’s a great guy.”
There’s so much to this story left unanswered. Did Fitzpatrick and Kelce play on the same team or were they actually adversaries in beer pong? Who else was playing in the game? Kelce and Mahomes have previously and notably played beer pong with Post Malone.
Most importantly, did this game of beer pong occur before or after Fitzpatrick helped Kansas City secure a first-round bye in the 2019-20 playoffs?
