Jason Kelce Broke Down in Tears Seconds Into His Retirement Announcement

Future Hall of Fame center and current podcast co-host Jason Kelce officially announced his retirement from the NFL at a press conference early Monday afternoon. Kelce, who played 13 seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles, will now be able to pick up the media job of his choosing and pretty much everyone on the planet believes he’ll be great at that too. But goodbyes are hard and he’s a man in touch with his emotions so the proceedings got underway with some waterworks.

“We’ll see how long this lasts,” he said before burying his face in his hands and crying for about 20 seconds. “Not a good start.”

We knew Kelce was beloved but the outpouring of support for him on social media — whatever that’s worth — is actually a bit astounding in both abundance and strength. The NFL has a tremendous amount of likable stars but it’s entirely possible that this Kelce brother is the one with the highest universal Q rating.

He’s been all over everything for the past two years what with his own Super Bowl run and then coming to support Travis (and also Travis’ girlfriend) on his own most recent championship run. Yet he’s still down to earth enough to retire while wearing a cutoff T-shirt like a midday ESPN host. He seems comfortable in every situation with every group of people, which is extremely endearing. And he doesn’t appear to bend any of his authenticity to fit in.

So yeah, the warm responses begin to make a lot of sense. That he was able to build something like this while playing in Philadelphia makes it even more impressive. Those fans are tough graders with strong opinions and then people have feelings on Philly fans.

It’s goodbye for now yet you’ll be seeing and hearing from this big fella for many years to come.