Travis Kelce Says He Was “Damn Near Dead Broke” After His Rookie Season, Even After an $800,000 Signing Bonus

Kelce dropped $10,000 on one pair of sneakers with his first NFL paycheck, then learned rookies don’t get paid again until the following August. By the time the season ended, the money was gone.

The sneakers were size 13 Nike Air Mag “Marty McFlys,” and Kelce says they’re the only thing he has left to show for his first NFL check. They cost him $10,000.

“Watching Back to the Future so many frickin’ times and seeing what the Nikes looked like in the future and the fact that they were anti-gravity, those shoes were sweet! Self-tying, ugh man,” he said. He admitted “they weren’t cheap.”

Drafted with the first pick of the third round in 2013, Kelce says the $800,000 signing bonus shrank fast. “So I ended up seeing roughly, I think it was $500K – $600K, after taxes and everything,” he said on the podcast he hosts with his brother Jason.

What he didn’t understand was the timing. “I didn’t realize that you get your signing bonus before the season starts, and then you get your game checks every week. After the season, you’re not getting paid until August the next year. I was damn near dead broke.”

Jason explained why that trap caught so many young players. “The pay-per-game system was such a big issue because rookies didn’t realize that once the season was over, they weren’t getting paid. That’s why the league switched to paying players over the course of the year. Every game is paid over two weeks, so it gets paid out over about 34 weeks.”

Kelce’s finances look different now. He married Taylor Swift at Madison Square Garden earlier this month and is already back on the field training ahead of Chiefs camp.

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