A Goodbye to remember from a man we’ll never forget
I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but at some point well before the 2011 season, someone told me the Eagles really liked their sixth-round rookie center, Jason Kelce, that he could end up unseating incumbent starter Jamaal Jackson.
This was interesting, but it wasn’t earth-shattering news. In the time I’d covered the Eagles, starting in 2002, center had been a solid, stable position, manned at first by Hank Fraley, then by Jackson — undrafted players who got everything they could out of limited talent. They weren’t Pro Bowl types.
Center wasn’t a position the Eagles valued that highly; even though they thought Kelce could become a starter, they waited until the 191st overall pick to take him, and then when they tweeted news of the selection, they spelled his name “Kelsey.” Kelce was drafted one pick after Stanford safety Colin Jones (49ers) and one pick before Miami punter Matt Bosher (Falcons).
Kelce developed into something I’d never seen here before — an All-Pro center and a community icon, the heart and soul of the Eagles’ franchise and of the city. During Kelce’s tearful, poignant retirement speech Monday, another writer texted me, wondering if Kelce had surpassed Brian Dawkins as the quintessential Eagle. They occupy different chambers of the city’s heart, I think, but it’s a fair question. And as time passes, many younger fans remember Kelce’s career more clearly than Dawk’s.
Dawk never got to stand on the Art Museum steps and deliver the end-of-parade benediction to a crazed throng of fans celebrating their most amazing moment — the winning of the franchise’s first Super Bowl. And if he had, he probably wouldn’t have thought to dress up like a Mummer. I don’t think anybody, from Concrete Charlie right on through Jaws and Jeremiah Trotter, ever really “got” the city’s psyche so well.
“That wasn’t my speech, it was Philadelphia’s,” Kelce said Monday.
I’m 68 years old now, and 2011 doesn’t seem terribly distant. Or it didn’t, before Kelce started unspooling memories from his early Eagles days, talking about Trent Cole, Todd Herremans, Brent Celek, the late Howard Mudd. Yeah, that was all a while ago now, wasn’t it?
Kelce’s preparation was always meticulous, and so it was Monday. At the start of his address, when he eventually got control of his emotions, he name-checked all of his youth coaches in football, hockey and lacrosse, along with “my band teacher, Brett Baker.” Jason played baritone sax.
He recalled the awful day at Lehigh before his second NFL season when the team awoke to the news that head coach Andy Reid’s troubled son Garrett had passed away. Kelce called Reid’s address to the team hours later “the most intense moment I’ve ever shared with a group of men.”
I’m bringing that up because most retirement speeches are like Facebook updates on the family, you highlight the good and downplay the bad, but Kelce gave plenty of time to both. To do otherwise would have been dishonest. He has been through a lot here, and it hasn’t been an unending series of wonderful events.
Even in recounting that wonderful Super Bowl LII victory, and the Tom Brady fumble that all but sealed the win, Kelce noted that “Brandon Graham stopped Brady once. Literally once,” in the 41-33 victory.
The relationship between Philly fans and players is like that — you have to acknowledge, everything isn’t always perfect.
“They will love you in this city if you love it, the way you love your brother,” he said. “You will be loved by going above and beyond to show that you care, because they care. They’ve been caring for generations in this town about this team. And they aren’t about to accept a bunch of excuses and soft-ass nonsense representing the name on the front of the jersey, something they’ve invested their entire lives in.” (Wish Kelce had told Howie Roseman and Nick Sirianni that before they spoke last week at the NFL Scouting Combine.)
Kelce’s departure leaves a huge hole in the Eagles’ talent level and leadership for 2024. Yes, they’ve drafted a series of replacements, most recently Cam Jurgens, but how many times in any franchise’s history do you replace a Hall-of-Fame level player without taking a step backward at that position, or overall?
That’s something to get into down the line, as the Eagles prepare for free agency and the draft. I hate that Kelce’s final memories as an Eagle are of that awful 2023 collapse, but I’m happy for him and his family.
“A father who is present, loving, devoted, just may be the greatest gift a child can ask for in our society,” Kelce said. He was talking about his own dad, but now that he is stepping away from the long hours of preparation and rehabilitation that came with playing top-level football at age 36, I think he will be better able to take up that role in the family he has created with his Delco-raised wife, Kylie.
Kelce called himself “vastly overrated,” but allowed that “it took a lot of hard work and determination getting here. I have been the underdog my entire career, and I mean this when I say it, I wish I still was.”
Kelce got to both start and finish his career here, something that is increasingly rare. Didn’t happen for Dawk, or Donovan McNabb, or Jaws, or Reggie, or Jason Peters, or Harold Carmichael. Kelce talked about that privilege, as well. He called his fit with the city perfect.
“Forever we shall all share the bond of being Philadelphians,” he said. “That’s all I got.”