Travis Kelce arrives in Vegas with a battered body and a tapestry of war wounds after a brutal season with the Chiefs… but victory with Taylor Swift in the stands would be the ending that cements his place as an all-time great

Chris Jones placed a tablet on his locker and clicked play. The defensive tackle had just spent a few hours doing his day’s job of setting up the Chiefs’ defensive line. Now it was time for his part-time role.

Jones started his set DJing in the locker room and soon had the smoke machine on as well – Jones puffed on a big cigar as he joined some teammates and staff for an impromptu photo shoot to celebrate the win over the Baltimore Ravens – and a fourth Super Bowl appearance in five years.

Cameras soon caught an intruder: Travis Kelce, stripped to his underwear, entering stage right. He and Jones shook hands and bumped chests.

A few minutes later, however, Kelce stood alone outside his locker. It was pretty bare: his cell phone, his clothes and a few cans of drinks… his body, on the other hand? A mess. Cuts and scrapes and scrapes and nicks and those dark circles – the unmistakable scars of cupping therapy.

The Chiefs’ festivities continued even after Kelce was led to a side room and to a massage table. There he sat quietly while the staff cleared out the locker room nearby and teammates headed to the afterparty. Through those double doors, medics tended to Kelce’s tapestry of war wounds.

Those close to the tight end have described the NFL as Kelce’s “side hustle.” After all, he has so many obligations and makes so much money off the field. However, last Sunday his body painted a different picture. It was a bloody illustration that the 34-year-old, after all he has won and earned, still pays full price for football. A reminder that preparing his 6-foot-4, 250-pound frame for the toll of any given Sunday is a full-time job.

He undergoes cupping, dry needling, occlusion therapy and a pregame diet with anti-inflammatories. The injuries still linger, Kelce still feels “every” of his ten operations.

He has gone under the knife before, but this year he is also under the microscope more than ever. He has played through pain before, but this year more than ever he has had to play under pressure.

There were some who wondered, as the Chiefs started to wobble and Kelce went seven games without a touchdown, if it all started to mean something. Whether the circus that came with dating Taylor Swift followed him onto the field. Whether Father Time finally came knocking at the age of 34.

“It was a little different this year,” Kelce recently admitted. ‘We had a tick here and there. Guys pointed to the wide reception area, pointing to how old my ass is getting….”

But then, within seven days, Kelce flipped the script. In Buffalo and then in Baltimore, the Chiefs star provided a devastating reminder of his enduring talents. He broke several NFL records and then asked another question: Should Kelce win a third Super Bowl in Las Vegas, are there many better at what he does?

“I just tried to create this ultimate tight end,” Kelce recently told ESPN. “I took bits and pieces from all the guys mentioned (among the greats).”

Like Tony González. “I got a lot out of his playing.” The same goes for Rob Gronkowski. And Antonio Gates – “(he) fueled me with confidence,” says Kelce. So to talk about in the same breath? “It’s an absolute honor,” Kelce admits. But only good.

Gronk won four Super Bowls – including three as part of the Patriots dynasty of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, while Gonzalez caught for 15,127 receiving yards – more than any tight end in history.

But Kelce is writing his own chapter in the NFL record books: Against the Bills, he and Mahomes surpassed Brady and Gronkowski by combining for their 16th postseason touchdown — more than anyone else.

Then against the Ravens, Kelce moved past Jerry Rice into uncharted waters: now no one has more than his 156 postseason receptions.

Only the legendary 49ers receiver can top Kelce’s 1,810 playoff yards (2,245) and 19 postseason touchdowns (22). Only ex-Patriots WR Julian Edelman can match the streak of five-plus receptions in thirteen straight playoff games.

To think there was fear that the Ravens defense – the best in the league this regular season – would swallow up the visitors. Instead of? Mahomes and Kelce met 11 times and the Chiefs are back where they belong: in the Super Bowl.

“When the lights get brighter, he plays better. That’s the true mark of a champion, and that’s what he is,” the quarterback said of Kelce. So normal service has resumed? Not quite. The Chiefs still have Mahomes and Kelce. They are still formed by Andy Reid. But they’ve changed from the team that reached three of the previous four Super Bowls.

“It’s just a different world man,” Kelce said. So when it became clear that they were no longer shutting down opponents, the Chiefs had no choice but to change. To embrace the role of villains.

“We had to become that team that has that grit and that fire … that finds ways to win,” he said. That goes for Kelce too. For much of his season, the tight end has had to work his way through games. Of course he fought the pain. He’s been criticized for his performances, his midseason trip to see Swift perform in Argentina… and the endless commercials.

He has also struggled with motivation: “Especially after 11 years, getting excited for a random game in goddamn November, when you know you’re about to wax this goddamn team, it’s hard to fucking go getting it going,” Kelce admitted last week. “And this year it was harder than ever because we didn’t win those games.”

His frustrations sometimes boiled over, most vividly on Christmas Day, when the Chiefs imploded against the Raiders. While Swift was in the stands, Kelce threw his helmet and collided with coach Reid.

“Trav took a lot of flak, and that’s the nature of this business,” brother Jason Kelce told DailyMail.com. “But offensively they’ve gotten better and better across the board… Trav shares in that success.”

Like never before, Kelce’s fortunes have rippled under a “magnifying glass.”

“I’ve obviously never dated someone who had that kind of aura… I’ve never had to deal with it,” he told the newspaper WJ in November. “The criticism she gets, how much she carries a magnifying glass with her every day – paparazzi outside her house, outside every restaurant she goes to, after every flight she gets off.”

Kelce insisted he wouldn’t “run away” from the extra attention that comes with dating Swift — and his own podcast on New Heights. “From having the paparazzi follow me to work every day, to everyone having my name on their talk show every day, whether it’s sports, whether it’s not sports, it’s just been a crazy, crazy ride which I could never have foreseen,” he says.

“I had to take a step back and really look at how I was portraying myself to the world,” he recently admitted.

“People can perceive whatever they want, but I wanted to make sure that the guys – the men and women in this building – knew that I was 100 percent focused on this team and getting this team to where we are today.”

After games, Kelce likes to deflate with friends from his early days. He often watches the same movies and TV shows. This season could still have an ending that it’s seen a few times before. In recent months, however, Kelce and the Chiefs have survived plot twists that no one could have prepared for.

“It’s just about persevering through that,” the tight end has said. And according to his mother, Kelce is happier than he has been in “a long time.”

Certainly, those scratches and scars won’t go away – Kelce would play with a lot more pain than many other players. Fortunately, he enjoys rewards like few others.

“Every year is different and there have been years where I’ve had to fight through things that were honestly a little more serious and a little more frustrating than what I had to go through this year. But this year I think the fact that we didn’t win was a result of how I felt physically and you can catch yourself in a darker room, I guess,” Kelce said recently.

“We’re finally getting going, finally playing our best ball at the right time and how can you not get excited about that?” How can you not wake up every day knowing you have a chance to go get this thing? It’s the best feeling in the world.’