NFL’s Sweet Tribute to Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift’s romance with Travis Kelce has been given a subtle shout-out in the NFL’s new cartoon graphic promoting its upcoming Christmas Day game for Nickelodeon’s NFL on Nickmas.

On Christmas Day, football fans will be treated to a trio of games as the Baltimore Ravens face the San Francisco 49ers, the Philadelphia Eagles take on the New York Giants, and Kansas City Chiefs battle it out with the Las Vegas Raiders.

To mark Monday’s upcoming Chiefs-Raiders game, the NFL and Nickelodeon this week unveiled a cartoon graphic that showed various players from the two teams.


Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is portrayed as diving toward the ground with a wrapped Christmas gift in hand. Wearing a pair of purple ear muffs, Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby is shown attempting to tackle Mahomes.

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce

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Mahomes’ teammates Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Isiah Pacheco, and Christopher Deshun Jones are also featured in the cartoon. Representing the Raiders are Amik Robertson, Davante Adams, and Josh Jacobs.

In the right-hand corner of the graphic, Kelce is shown wearing his No. 87 jersey while sitting cross-legged on the floor next to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. The cartoon version of Kelce is seen stringing together beads for friendship bracelets.

In an accompanying caption, the post asked fans if they could “spot all the Easter eggs,” adding that they can “unwrap all the surprises with #NFLonNickmas.”

A number of eagle-eyed Swift fans commenting on the Instagram post caught the friendship bracelet reference, as it applies to Kelce’s romance with the pop star.

Back in July, Kelce was seen attending Swift’s Eras Tour concert at Arrowhead Stadium, his team’s home venue in Kansas City, Missouri. While at the show, the athlete was seen trading friendship bracelets with fans.

Kelce later admitted on an episode of his podcast, New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce, that he had planned to give Swift his phone number on one of his friendship bracelets at the show, but wasn’t afforded the opportunity.


“I was disappointed that she doesn’t talk before or after her shows because she has to save her voice for the 44 songs she sings, so I was a little butthurt that I didn’t get to hand her one of the bracelets I made for her,” he said at the time.

As it turns out, Kelce speaking about Swift on his podcast was effective enough, as the chart-topping singer herself revealed in a recent issue of Time, which has named her its 2023 Person of the Year.

“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” told the publication of their relationship. “We started hanging out right after that. So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other.”

The couple made their first public appearance in September when Swift attended a Chiefs game alongside Kelce’s mom, Donna Kelce, who has proven herself to be a passionate “Swiftie” in her own right.

“By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game?” Swift explained. “We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.”

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in November, Kelce said that after shouting out Swift on his podcast in July, “someone playing Cupid” on the singer’s team and gave his number to her. She later texted him, and the rest is history.

Swift has since become a fixture at Chiefs game, with NFL broadcasts often focusing on her presence—much to the exasperation of some football fans.

“I’m just there to support Travis,” Swift recently told Time. “I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and p****** off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.”

Addressing the cameras often panning her way, she said: “I don’t know how they know what suite I’m in. There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when [the] camera is putting you in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once.”

“Football is awesome, it turns out,” Swift quipped (“playfully,” according to Sam Lansky, the author of the story). “I’ve been missing out my whole life.”