Jason Kelce Retirement

Connor Neely, Staff Writer

March 7, 2024

This past monday March 4th, 2024, National Football League all-star center Jason Kelce formaly announced his retirement. This was upsetting news for the NFL community to receive as he has been in the league for 13 seasons and has played 193 games. Thats a long time to play in the NFL, which makes it even more amazing that he played all 193 of those games with the Philadelphia Eagles. That is extremely rare to see these days with stars wanting to sign bigger contracts, and/or wanting a ring. Luckily for Jason Kelce, he had both.

Jason was born and raised in the Cincinnati, Ohio area going to high school, as well as playing college football at the University of Cincinatti. He played there with his brother Travis Kelce (Taylor Swifts boyfriend), but he did not have a ton of publicity around his name and would go on to be selected in the sixth round of the NFL Draft. What a lot of people dont know about Jason is that he did not go to UC as strictly a center, he was formerly a runningback and linebacker at Cincinatti Heights High School. He ws then moved from RB to fullback, and then made the switch to the trenches.

Jason Kelce spoke about his draft worries in his retirement speech, he said he only weighed 280 pounds, when the average lineman was around 300-310 pounds. But lucky enough for him the Eagles had just hired a new offensive line coach. This coach was Howard Mudd, who was an all time great and he really valued the athleticsm of an offensive lineman opposed to sheer size.

Fans didnt know if this retirement was going to come last year, when his contract was up, but he decided to play another year for a chance at his second Super Bowl ring. But Kelce signed for the 2023-2024 season a one year contract for $14.2 million. The Eagles were looking extremely promising in the first half of the year holding the number one spot in the NFL for a few weeks. The team looked strong and was looking like their 2018 team that beat Tom Brady and the Patriots in the Super Bowl 41-33. But this was short lived and the wheels started to fall off towards the back half of the season.

The eagles fell from the one seed in the NFC and a first round bye, to the 5 seed having to go on the road to Tampa Bay to play the Bucaneers. Sure enough the struggles continued and the Eagles lost the game and were first round exits.

Jason Kelce racked up many accolades in his NFL career, to name a few: