Any NFL fan knows to take the contract details reported during free agency with a grain of salt. But even by that standard, FS1 host Nick Wright is throwing a yellow flag on the journalistic approach of one top league insider.
A top story this spring was whether superstar tight end Travis Kelce would retire or return for another season with the Kansas City Chiefs. When Kelce decided to return, he did so for a modest $12 million, plus some incentives.
The upcoming season is expected to be Kelce’s last in the NFL. Fairly straightforward news, or so we all thought.
In a segment on his podcast What’s Wright on Tuesday, Wright drew attention to the “wildly misleading” report from NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport on the specifics of Kelce’s contract, claiming that Rapoport “blatantly misinformed the public.”
“I’ve had dinner with this guy. I share an agent with this guy. I have nothing against him personally. Much the opposite,” Wright said. “But Ian Rapoport’s tweet about Travis Kelce’s contract … this is now the second time in a couple weeks that Rapoport has, via his very popular and followed Twitter account, blatantly misinformed the public.”
In Rapoport’s tweet breaking down the deal, he described it as a three-year contract worth nearly $55 million. All while giving a nod to Kelce’s agents — another habit of top insiders that Wright has previously decried.
The other report on X that Wright is referencing was about the value Detroit got in trading David Montgomery to Houston. Rapoport was community-noted for claiming that a package of a fourth-round pick, a seventh-round pick, and a reserve offensive lineman equaled “fifth-round value.”
To defend his argument that Rapoport is intentionally misleading football fans about Kelce’s contract, Wright added some background information of his own.
“I’m not breaking this news. (Kelce) signed a deal that is a one-year, $12 million deal that has $3 million in earnable incentives. That is the effective deal he signed,” Wright explained.
“There is absolutely no shot, even if Travis decides, ‘I want to keep playing,’ that he is going to get a $40 million balloon payment in early March. Everyone knows that, which is why, if your goal is to inform the public, report the actual information. The real actionable intel is Travis Kelce is on a de facto one-year, $12 million deal where he can make $3 million in incentives.”
According to Wright, the contract is for $12 million this season, the league minimum next season, plus the “balloon payment” for a hypothetical third season.
Wright added that the $40 million payment scheduled for the fifth day of the league year in 2027 was included in the contract just to tack on a third year, which he says will be effectively fake. The third year simply allows Kansas City to spread Kelce’s $12 million plus incentives over three seasons rather than just two.
“It cannot be up to $57 million. It can’t be,” Wright said. “I’m not Edward R. Murrow, and I’m not even a journalist. But if you’re going to consider yourself a reporter and your job is to inform the public about news, then you cannot willingly put out intentionally wildly misleading information because you want the guy who runs Milk Honey Sport to owe you a favor.”
Even if insider-favor-trading is commonplace in sports reporting these days, that doesn’t mean everyone has to accept it. As Wright added, “It’s not football fans’ job to really scour OverTheCap.com.”
NFL contracts are confusing enough. Treating accounting conveniences as part of a player’s compensation package only adds to the confusion fans have in consuming the sport. In theory, the top reporters on the league’s beat should actually be working to counteract the angles that teams and agencies are trying to work.
Instead, insiders like Rapoport often release information that is so clearly positioned on one side of a story that it ultimately makes the story even murkier.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.