Travis Kelce isn’t ready to put a date on retirement, but he’s finally put a number on the record he’s chasing. On the latest New Heights episode, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end admitted that catching Tony Gonzalez atop the NFL’s all-time tight end charts is a bigger gap than he once figured, one he now believes will take another half-decade to close.

“When I moved to tight end, guys like Jason Witten were at the helm. I was looking at who was the best in the world at doing this right now,” Kelce said on the New Heights Podcast. “Tony Gonzalez was there, Jason Witten was right there, and Gronk was right there.

“I was looking at these guys and thinking, ‘Man, how do I get to that level?’ So to be in the same talks as these guys at this point in my career, it’s an absolute honor. Jason, it’s an absolute honor to be in the same conversation as you. And I’ll have to just play another five years to catch Tony.”

During Monday night’s season opener against the Denver Broncos, with Taylor Swift watching, Kelce quietly climbed into the record books. He walked into the game 45 yards shy of passing Jason Witten’s career mark of 13,046 receiving yards for tight ends. Kelce crossed the mark and is now No. 2 on the leaderboard, and he got there with quite the spectacle.

Early in the third quarter, Mahomes hit him with a short pass over the middle. Kelce shook off a tackle, took off downfield, and turned the pass into a 59-yard gain before being brought down near the Broncos’ 5-yard line. It was his longest catch since 2021. And with it, he passed Witten’s record.

He finished the night with three catches for 71 yards, bringing his career total to 13,073, and helped Kansas City bag a 31-10 win.

Tony Gonzalez, who played 17 years in the league (12 with the Chiefs), retired with 15,127 receiving yards. That means Kelce will have to cover a gap of more than 2,000 yards. It’s a tall task; Kelce is now playing his 14th season in the league, and retirement talks have surrounded him for quite some time now.

The numbers back that up. Kelce hasn’t hit the 1,000-yard mark in a season since 2022, averaging closer to 886 yards a year since then. He is also 37 years old, the same age that Gonzalez played his last season. However, that 59-yard catch was proof that Kelce joins the former great as one of the best tight ends in the history of the league, playing at a high clip despite being old.

“First of all, he’s phenomenal,” Gonzalez said of Kelce, per The Kansas City Star. “I think he’s the best tight end ever at (yards after the catch), but it’s not something that’s bruising physically like a Jeremy Shockey or (Rob) Gronkowski, so you can take less hits. And I think that’s why he’s been able to stay pretty healthy over his career. And I was kind of the same way.”

Notably, Travis Kelce ranks third among tight ends in career catches with 1,083 and fifth in touchdown catches with 82. Nobody at the position has more 100-yard games than his 38, and his 1,416-yard season from 2020 is still the single-season record for tight ends. Throw in the fact that he owns the record for most postseason catches by any player ever, at 178, and it’s clear this guy has nothing left to prove.

“I still think I can go out and play at a high level, and I want to go out there and prove to myself that I can play at a better level than I did last year,” Kelce said in the offseason. “I think that’s probably the biggest thing for me is making sure that I’m accountable for the guys in this room every single play that I’m out there.

So sure, the five-year joke got some laughs on the podcast, but it is still a very achievable target if Travis Kelce continues to defy norms.