If you’ve ever wondered what could possibly sideline a two-time Super Bowl champion and newly minted pop culture figure, it turns out Travis Kelce meets his match somewhere entirely unexpected: seated at a long table, script in hand, with the cast of Saturday Night Live staring back.

When Audible Meets Audition

Recounting his hosting experience on the “Bussin’ with the Boys” podcast, Kelce revealed that the most intimidating part of joining SNL’s storied ranks had nothing to do with performing for a live audience or memorizing rapid-fire punchlines. Instead, as detailed in Variety’s coverage, the biggest challenge was the table read. While he characterizes the writers’ rooms as “fun because you’re just getting pitched ideas,” Kelce explained that, when it came to reading lines aloud, things took a turn: “The table reading, for a guy that can’t really read that well, it was kind of a f—ed situation.”

Pulling further from People’s account, Kelce added that his nerves during the read-through stemmed partly from wanting to come across as “professional” and “not behave like he was taking advantage of the opportunity.” This wasn’t a case of athlete-bluster; Kelce said he just “felt like I was trying to get through the reading instead of actually acting it out and giving it a voice and giving it a character and things like that.” Anyone who’s ever read a line in class while silently counting ahead to see which paragraph will be theirs will recognize the quiet panic in “just focused on, ‘Don’t f—— skip this line.’” Describing himself as “more of an audio guy,” Kelce made it clear the act of reading out loud, as opposed to reacting and improvising, represented the week’s biggest hurdle.

IMDb’s summary of the events draws on these same accounts, reinforcing Kelce’s summary of the table read as a “f—ed situation” and highlighting how the NFL star found this aspect of the process more daunting than the live sketches themselves.

Even Big Leaguers Get Test Anxiety

There is something quietly delightful about the notion that a man capable of dissecting defensive schemes at blinding speed can be utterly flummoxed by a stack of stapled paper. In his reflections, Kelce recognized the irony, noting that while scripted roles have given him a bit of trouble in the past, unscripted comedy—where you’re “just getting pitched ideas”—felt much more comfortable. According to People, Kelce’s intention wasn’t just to have fun, but “to make them respect my approach and how I’m taking it serious[ly].” This pressure to perform, not just for the camera but for the professional comedians around him, shifted the whole experience into the realm of what he dubbed a “fun roller-coaster”—complete with a few white-knuckle moments along the way.

What’s curious is the contrast: NFL playbooks aren’t exactly light reading material. Yet, in a detail highlighted by Variety, it’s the format and expectation of a comedy table read—immediate, performative, and reliant on bringing characters to life through text—that left him struggling. Clearly, run-pass options are one thing; cold script reading is quite another.

Everyone Has Their Out-of-Bounds

Despite admitting to his nerves and the feeling of being a little lost at sea amid the SNL rituals, Kelce ultimately described the experience as “so cool” and “an experience that was like nothing else that I’ve ever gone through,” as People observed from his reflections after the broadcast. IMDb points out that this episode wasn’t just a box to check in a growing list of celebrity cameos; instead, it pushed Kelce to recognize a newfound enjoyment of scripted comedy—ironic, given his stated discomfort with reading the lines. Perhaps, as Kelce puts it, it’s all about knowing your strengths: “more of an audio guy,” decidedly not an eager table read participant.

In theory, the gap between multimillion-dollar athlete and comedy performer feels like a chasm. In practice, it’s as narrow as the gap between reading something silently and suddenly finding yourself tasked with voicing it for a room of seasoned comics. Who knew that the buffer between football legend and everyday awkwardness was measured in script pages?

In the end, maybe even celebrity has its limits. For Travis Kelce, those limits are less about what happens under stadium lights and more about what happens when the stage lights go up and you’re clutching a script. Is there a more relatable Achilles’ heel? It begs the question—how many of us would blitz a live show if only we could skip the cold reading?