Jason’s now globally famous brother Travis entered the Philadelphia Eagles’ press room as his usual snazzy self – two-tone shirt, dark glasses and a pair of friendship bracelets circling his right wrist (including one that connected two Ts with a heart) – and sat down in the front row with his parents. Jason soon followed, back from his 7th stint at the Pro Bowl, completely in character: hair – both head and face – bushy, black muscle tee, water bottle in hand. As he took his place, alone, at the table at the front of the room, he thanked people for coming.
“Let’s see how long this lasts,” the Eagles’ center managed to say before shaking his head, emotion taking over, deep breaths and a few tries at “come on!” doing little to prevent the onslaught of tears that would pepper, interrupt and make perfect his retirement speech. “Not a good start.”
But the tears, the emotion and the heart Jason Kelce put on display for the next 45 minutes as he talked about his family, his friends, his teachers, his coaches and teammates, and the staff in the Eagles’ operation were as much the point as any of the actual words that came out of his mouth.
The purpose of the press conference was to confirm what most everyone knew: Jason Kelce was retiring after 13 seasons of professional football, stepping away from a career that included, in addition to those Pro Bowl nods, a Super Bowl win (2018) and a Super Bowl loss (2023), the latter against his brother no less, something that was not lost on him in this speech.
But Jason Kelce’s retirement speech gave us so much more than just a sports headline. Not only was I not alone in dropping everything to watch him, I was also not the only one — if TikTok and my sister are any indication — who had tears spilling down my face as I did so. Jason did too, and that was his gift: his speech was a master class in why all men should cry.
“As players, you write the narratives,” Jason said. And his retirement monologue is yet another example of how both Kelce brothers are changing so many narratives, rewriting what tough-guy heteronormative masculinity looks like, at least from a central casting point of view. Long considered to be the most successful siblings in the NFL, these two wear their hearts on their sleeves, demonstrating that emotion not only isn’t something we should hide: it is something that can make us better, and put a spotlight on us to boot.
We have seen these brothers in action, together, many times: facing one another on the field, next to each other on “Saturday Night Live,” in seemingly raw display in “Kelce” (2023), Amazon Prime’s documentary that focused on Jason and his family as he contemplated when the end of his career would happen. We have heard them on their hit podcast “New Heights,” where we get to enjoy things like Travis mocking his older brother for wearing shorts and sandals to his documentary’s premiere, something for which Jason at first tries (unconvincingly) to blame on his wife, Kylie.
