The Seattle Seahawks handed the Kansas City Chiefs their first loss of the season on Sunday night, beating them 20-3 at Lumen Field. This was also a game that featured multiple historic lows in the Patrick Mahomes era.

Even as Mahomes endured one of the worst performances of his career, Hall of Famer Cris Carter had a particularly sharp message about Travis Kelce, suggesting the legendary tight end no longer looked like a superstar.

Seattle Held Kansas City to Patrick Mahomes Era Lows

Kansas City’s three points tied its fewest in Mahomes’ 153 career regular-season and postseason starts. The only other time came in a 2021 loss to the Tennessee Titans. The Chiefs’ 213 total yards were the second-fewest in a Mahomes start, behind only 212 in a Divisional Round playoff win over the Houston Texans in January 2025.

They never reached the red zone, which had never happened in a Mahomes start, and for the first time in both the Mahomes era and Andy Reid’s entire head-coaching career, they had neither a completion of 20-plus yards nor a run of 10-plus. Mahomes’ 5.0 yards per attempt were the fifth-lowest of his career. Yikes.

For Carter, who was breaking down the game on the “Fully Loaded Podcast”, Sunday was “really the first time, especially with this wide receiving corps, that you can see that Travis Kelce is not a superstar. Seattle, the guys they got at linebacker and their safeties are too fast. I mean, too much speed, too much acceleration.”

Carter also said that the Seahawks were able to “cover him up and make him look like an average player in the game.”

Notably, Seattle’s league-best 3.99 yards per play allowed this season puts it alongside only three other defenses since 2000 that stayed under 4.0 through the first seven games.

Carter noted that this is not the first time Mahomes has struggled this badly, saying the Chiefs quarterback had been in “two other games like this before,” citing “the two Super Bowl games,” in which they lost to Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Philadelphia Eagles.

Kelce, meanwhile, caught four of his eight targets for 44 yards on the night. Through Week 7, he averages 4 yards of separation at the catch point, eighth-widest of 107 qualified pass catchers, according to Next Gen Stats. He also gains 2.3 yards after the catch above expectation per reception, fifth of 107.

He has 24 catches, two touchdowns, and 343 yards, which ranks 32nd in the NFL. Kelce is ranked third in Pro Football Network’s NFL TE Impact Score with an 86.6 grade through Week 7.

By the final whistle, Kelce had 1,104 career catches in the regular season, fifth in NFL history after he moved past Marvin Harrison (1,102) and Carter (1,101).

His third catch, in the fourth quarter, also took him past Tony Gonzalez’s 15,413, giving Kelce the most combined regular-season and playoff receiving yards by a tight end in NFL history.

Carter then turned to what Kansas City should do next. “They’ve got to make a trade before the deadline because they’ve got a real defense. In any other game, they’re going to win that game.”

He named the likes of Garrett Wilson, Tyreek Hill, and Brian Thomas Jr. as potential targets before adding, “Look for Kansas City. They can’t stay like they are.”

Before Sunday night’s kickoff, PFN posted a list of the top 10 NFL offenses from Week 7 entering SNF, per its Offense Impact metric. Kansas City’s next two opponents both made the list: the New York Jets, sixth at 82.7, and the Denver Broncos, 10th at 79.4.

The Chiefs are still 5-1 and first in the AFC West. They will visit Denver on Nov. 1 and host the Jets on Nov. 8. The trade deadline is two days later, Tuesday, Nov. 10, at 4 p.m. ET.