Veteran Eagles center Jason Kelce reportedly is retiring, in the aftermath of Philly’s NFC wild-card loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday night. According to sources including ESPN, Kelce told teammates in the postgame locker room that he is retiring.
Kelce has considered retirement over the last few seasons, but was hoping to win what would’ve been his second Super Bowl title with the Eagles franchise. However, Philly fell to Tampa with a 32-9 loss to top-off a collapse later in the season by the Eagles, who lost six of their last seven games after a 10-1 start. Signs that Monday may have been Kelce’s final game in the NFL came in the closing seconds of the game, where a visibly emotional Kelce stood on the sidelines and shared a hug with Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland. (Kelce declined to speak with reporters after the game.)
The 36-year-old said last Friday: “I think it’s been natural the last three seasons for that for me. Whenever you’re older in your career, you never know when that’s going to be. I try to remind guys and my dad has told me this from the moment I started playing football — you step off the curb one day and that could be the end of your career. So you try to approach every game with that mindset, but obviously the closer and the older you get to that being a realization, puts it out in front maybe a little bit more. But obviously that’s not the main thing. The main thing is going out there and battling with each of the guys in this locker room.”
Kelce allowed just one sack and 12 pressures on the year, with a pressure rate per dropback of 1.9% after coming off a career year where he allowed zero sacks, eight pressures, and a 1.3% pressure rate allowed per dropback. He will go down as one of the greatest Philadelphia Eagles players of all time, and arguably the greatest player at his position in league history. The veteran was selected as a first-team All-Pro for the sixth time this season, becoming the only center since the merger to earn six first-team All-Pro selections and win a Super Bowl title. He is also a first-team All-Pro at his position for the sixth time in the last seven seasons, just the fifth center in NFL history with that many All-Pro selections.
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