Taylor Swift quietly visited Travis Kelce at the stadiums before their relationship went public, a Kansas City Chiefs coach said.
“When she started to come around, it was privately,” the Chiefs’ defensive backs coach Dave Merritt said during a recent episode of “The Sports Shop With Reese and K-Mac” podcast.
“She was coming into the stadiums without people really knowing until the camera put a big spotlight on it,” Merritt said.
Despite the backlash Swift faced for being shown too often on the screen at the NFL games, Merritt thinks she had a positive influence on the team and even called her a part of the Chiefs “family.”
“She actually affected the team in a positive way. It wasn’t a negative way,” Merritt said. “It was everybody was excited that Travis was happy. So, when my player, my brother, is happy beside me, that helps me, and that encourages me. And so, Travis came in there a different man, so she helped us.”
Merritt’s comments line up with comments Swift previously made about her relationship with Kelce.
In a December 2023 interview with Time, the singer said she and Kelce were official by the time she attended her first game in September.
“By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple,” Swift told Time. “I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.”
In the same interview, Swift said she and Kelce “had a significant amount of time that no one knew,” which gave them a chance to get to know each other.
Merritt isn’t the only Chiefs coach who thinks highly of Swift.
“It hasn’t been a distraction, so there haven’t been any problems with it,” Chiefs head coach Andy Reid said during an interview with SiriusXM NFL Radio in early February. “She’s a good girl, and she loves the game and obviously loves Kelce, so I’m happy for both of them.”
Representatives for Swift and Kelce did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
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