Jason Kelce’s Last Stand: A valiant epilogue that saw the Eagles legend battle time, his body, and a collapsing team

The Jason Kelce head shake became the tell-tale sign for when the Eagles’ offensive game plan was unlikely to work last season.

Or at least that’s how Lane Johnson saw it.

“Any time Kelce would get mad during the week, early in the week, or if he didn’t agree with the game plan, most time we’re not going to win the game,” Johnson said. “It was that way my whole career. Any time we would have a game and he would do the head shaking during early in the week … he knew stuff wasn’t going to work.

“He could tell.”

Kelce had significant influence on Eagles coaches by his 13th NFL season. But as the team plummeted in the final two months — in what would be the last season for the All-Pro center — there was little even he could do to stop the inevitable.

“Once the ship got punctured,” Johnson said recently, “it [bleeping] went down.”

» READ MORE: unCovering the Birds, Season 3, Episode 1: Kelce’s Last Stand (Part 1)

Several months earlier in training camp, the Eagles were brimming with hope. And having Kelce return for yet another go-around — after his annual retirement consternation — would be paramount if they wanted to get back to the Super Bowl and this time win.

unCovering the Birds, The Inquirer’s Eagles podcast, was there to chronicle it all as the future Hall of Famer played his final games in midnight green — from the highs of the first two months when Kelce saw through a near-perfect record to the late-season lows when coach Nick Sirianni’s team imploded.

“If there’s something that I don’t believe is good, or I think is wrong, I’m going to tell people,” Kelce said at one point during the season. “I’m not always right. … When I believe something, I’m gonna voice my opinion. And there’s gonna be times where the coach agrees or disagrees with me.”

The opening episodes for Season 3 of the pod, titled “Kelce’s Last Stand, Parts 1 and 2,” take listeners inside the veteran offensive lineman’s last journey, from the locker room at NovaCare Complex to off-field events like the premiere of his documentary film and his Super Bowl LVIII party in Las Vegas.

Through it all, and with a sharp focus the access provided, it became increasingly clear that Kelce was preparing for life after football. He had already set the wheels in motion and initially wanted his doc to be about the transition a professional football player makes into retirement.

Kelce had been pondering the idea for years and had built an identity away from the gridiron with various enterprises, none more successful than New Heights, the podcast he started with his brother, Travis, in 2022.

» READ MORE: unCovering the Birds, Season 3, Episode 1: Kelce’s Last Stand (Part 2)

The chemistry between the brothers made the show immediately popular, but it exploded when Travis, a Kansas City Chiefs tight end, started dating music star Taylor Swift. Jason might not have been attracting the same attention, but his marketability increased, as well.

The off-field demands of business and family life, and the opportunities that retirement would provide, suggested that his end days were nearing. But nothing spoke more to that than his aching flesh and bones.

“I’m banged up, but I’m always banged up by the end of it,” Kelce said in January after what would be his final practice. “You’re wore out — your knees, your ankles, your joints. Especially the older you are, the more you feel all that stuff.”

Kelce had been open about the physical toll of the game before. But he hardly ever told the full story of how he managed to play in 167 consecutive games, including playoffs, over the last decade. Johnson, who came to refer to his long-time teammate as Tin Man, and others with the Eagles saw his sacrifice up close.

“You could feel his body would be just kind of falling apart some days,” Johnson said. “The guy was just a damn warrior. Everybody has to battle in this game, but you saw a guy that really took it to the limit, emotionally, physically, the way he practiced.

“When you see a guy have to give all that effort into being what he’s become, then it motivates everybody else.”

» READ MORE: What it takes for Jason Kelce to be the Eagles’ ironman

In the end, Kelce’s toughness and determination couldn’t stave off the Eagles’ 1-6 finish, which ended with a first-round postseason loss at the Buccaneers. In the visiting locker room, the emotional captain spoke to the team as if retirement loomed, per Johnson.

When reporters were permitted inside, Kelce declined to talk.

“I don’t have it in me,” he said.

Six weeks later, Kelce made it official during a teary-eyed news conference: He was retiring from football.

His last stand, though, was a memorable one. Listen to how unCovering the Birds captured the public and private moments over the final months here.

“Kelce’s Last Stand, Parts 1 and 2” open Season 3 of unCovering the Birds on Friday and can be found at Inquirer.com/podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.