One of the most volatile moments in Super Bowl history seems destined to remain a mystery.
After running back Isiah Pacheco fumbled in the second quarter of Super Bowl 2024, with the Chiefs trailing the 49ers, 3-0, star tight end Travis Kelce — who had been off the field for the play — stormed up to head coach Andy Reid, bumped him and berated him.
This would have been a big deal in football circles regardless, given that Kelce and Reid are both sure-fire future Hall of Famers who have now won three Super Bowls together, and the intrigue about what Kelce yelled at the coach was supersized given his Q score ascendance from dating the world-renowned Taylor Swift.
However, “Inside the NFL,” the longtime weekly studio show that now airs on The CW and reveals what NFL players who are mic’d up say on the field, did not share the audio of the infamous dustup despite Kelce being mic’d up for the game.
Instead, “Inside the NFL” played the audio of CBS color commentator Tony Romo saying that Kelce told Reid to “keep me in” the game, and then cut to analysis from former players Channing Crowder, Chris Long and Ryan Clark.
Two people highly plugged into the sports media business told The Post that they suspect the Chiefs blocked NFL Films — which captures the mic’d up audio — and “Inside the NFL” from airing the direct Kelce soundbite, with one saying he thought that this edict came from Reid.
A rep for “Inside the NFL” declined to comment, and reps for the Chiefs and NFL Media (which operates NFL Films) did not respond to requests for comment by The Post.
A lip reader told The Post that he believed Kelce said, “Hey, come on, you f–ker, put me on.”
While it seems strange from the outside that NFL Films would comply with this request — given the interest in it — about a half-dozen sources briefed on this story were unsurprised.
One source told The Post that there are jokes amongst NFL Films crews that there is a vault that contains all the sensitive content from over the years that has never made it to TV.
In the case of Kelce, there would not necessarily be a large cohort of people privy to the audio, and knowledge of what was said could be constrained to a small circle of producers who are trained not to spread inflammatory material.
NFL Films is owned by the league, which itself is a collection of the 32 franchises, and there exists a clear understanding that the teams effectively have veto power over what makes it to air via the threat of restricting future access.
You could see this on display in 2019, when the Jets were livid at NFL Films that a clip of quarterback Sam Darnold saying he was “seeing ghosts” during a dismal performance against the Patriots made it to air during ESPN’s “Monday Night Football.”
Teams are also known to have final say over the content that makes it into HBO’s “Hard Knocks.”
Nevertheless, this Kelce circumstance feels different in the sense that it’s not as though this audio was surreptitiously recorded, nor would the audience be learning of it for the first time.
Rather, cameras showed Kelce’s tirade almost immediately, the soundbite is of huge national interest, and it’s hard to imagine that anything he said could have been worse than the act of physically bumping his head coach.
During the actual broadcast, CBS quickly moved on from the replay of the interaction and did not discuss it beyond its initial showing.
Regardless, the decision has been made and it doesn’t seem like any challenge to get the call reversed will be successful.
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