Travis Kelce calls Cleveland Browns contenders

While speaking at Jarvis Landry’s celebrity softball game, Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce said the Cleveland Browns are contenders

It’s easy for those of us who pay attention to the Cleveland Browns every day to call them contenders in 2021. We have seen them grow as a team and win 11 games in the regular season before scoring a win in a playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Then in the offseason, we watched as general manager Andrew Berry went to work addressing their areas of concern. Berry added help in the secondary with John Johnson III, Troy Hill, and Greg Newsome II.

He then fixed the pass rush by signing Jadeveon Clowney and Takk McKinley. Berry even brought in linebackers Anthony Walker and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah and a deep threat on offense in Anthony Schwartz.

Having said all that, fans have a tendency to look for the best in their team, so there could be times when they overvalue the moves made by their franchise. But that’s not the case with the Browns as other teams have also taken notice of their improvements. Take for instance the comments made by Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs who called the Browns contenders before saying how close the two clubs are to one another.

"“They’re definitely a contender, without a doubt,” Kelce said according to Nate Ulrich of the Akron Beacon Journal. “It’s definitely there. Baker [Mayfield] and the gang have upped the ante, made this team an unbelievable team and a team you have to prepare for and take serious. I think that moving forward without a doubt, I can see a lot more playoff games between us, and I’ll just take it one day at a time and hope for it. I think the Browns and Chiefs are definitely neck and neck.”"

Last year, the Chiefs made it to the Super Bowl and while they lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, it was still their second trip in a row (and they won it the year prior). On the way to the big game, they had to face Cleveland and the young Browns pushed them to their limit.

Kansas City won 22-17 but needed a huge fourth-down conversion late to seal the win. While they did have to do this without Patrick Mahomes who was lost earlier in the game with a concussion, the Chiefs saw that Cleveland could go toe-to-toe with them on offense.

Now with a revamped defense, there’s no denying that the Browns are much closer to being able to knock off the Chiefs.

We will get to see early on how close they are as the two teams face off in Week 1 to kick off the 2021 NFL Season.