New ESPN star Jason Kelce debuts on ‘Monday Night Football’ tonight: ‘This dude is going to be awesome’

It’s hard to miss Jason Kelce these days.

The former Eagles center turned media mogul can be heard weekly on his New Heights podcast alongside his brother, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. He’s also the pitchman for a dizzying array of products and companies, everything from Wawa to Buffalo Wild Wings to Marriott to sugary cereal combos.

Tonight, Kelce will start another gig as he makes his debut on ESPN’s Monday Night Football, appearing as a studio analyst leading up to kickoff between the New York Jets and San Francisco 49ers. It’s arguably the most anticipated NFL media debut this season, outside of Tom Brady joining Fox Sports, but Kelce said he’s still getting used to life as a media and internet celebrity.

In May, Kelce and his wife, Kylie, were heckled by a fan in Margate after the duo declined a request for a photo. The incident was filmed by an onlooker and quickly went viral, but it’s not the first time Kelce has had to deal with aggressive fans, an unfortunate reality of his new life in the spotlight.

“It’s a little much at times,” Kelce said in an interview with The Inquirer. “It’s a little annoying when you want to go to the arcade with your daughters and everybody wants to take a picture. But you understand where they’re coming from.”

“If Jim Thome walked down the street, I’d be doing the same thing,” Kelce added.

Kelce’s new role will certainly add to that exposure. He’ll appear on Monday Night Countdown every week alongside anchor Scott Van Pelt and fellow analysts Marcus Spears and Ryan Clark, but don’t expect the gentle giant to immediately ditch his flip-flops for a suit and tie. Everyone from studio executives to his new cohosts said the same thing when asked about ESPN’s newest star — they want Kelce to be Kelce.

“I think there’s a sincerity and earnestness to who he shows himself to be,” Van Pelt said. “He wasn’t the superstar coming out of college, but he’s going to go to Canton. I think people gravitate towards a story like that. This dude is going to be awesome.”

Kelce’s media career really began on Feb. 8, 2018, when he stood on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and delivered a passionately profane speech wearing a Mummers outfit following the Eagles’ Super Bowl victory. At the time, he did appearances on 94.1 WIP and was well known to Eagles fans, but the speech helped propel Kelce into a household name across the country.

“Certainly on the national level the speech was a turning point for me,” Kelce said. “It was something right away the entire world saw and was like, ‘Who is this guy, who is half-drunk dressed like a genie?’”

The success of New Heights — supercharged by his brother’s relationship with Taylor Swift — led to interest from Amazon and every network with NFL rights. One of the reasons he chose ESPN was because he and his brother watched the network almost exclusively growing up.

“Outside of Saved By The Bell,” when we woke up, the TV was on ESPN,” Kelce said. “It consumed us.”

Burke Magnus, ESPN’s president of content, said another thing that appealed to Kelce was the network’s pitch to have him on site and in front of fans on Monday Night Countdown. Magnus said some of the network’s competitors were offering Kelce studio jobs in Manhattan, which would have been a convenient drive up the New Jersey Turnpike from his home in Haverford.

“But he was like, ‘I want to be in the stadium with fans and players, to get a feel for the game,’” Magnus said. “So oddly enough, it turned out to be a real advantage to us to have him travel to games.”

That decision will place Kelce in front of Eagles fans in Week 2 on Sept. 16, when you can expect him to chug some beers and possibly shed some clothing at Xfinity Live!, where the Monday Night Football crew will record the pregame show ahead of Birds-Falcons at the Linc.

“We want him to be him. We don’t want him to try and be somebody else,” Magnus said. “And he even said, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’”

» READ MORE: ESPN and Jason Kelce will take over Xfinity Live! ahead of ‘Monday Night Football’

In addition to spending his entire 13-year career with the Eagles, Kelce continues to have an undefined role with the team. He’s not on the Eagles’ payroll, but he has spent a lot of time at the team’s facilities since his emotional retirement announcement in March.

That isn’t an issue for ESPN, which has said it’s fine with Kelce being around the Eagles in an unofficial capacity. And the network will certainly be playing it up in Week 2, when Monday Night Football rolls into Philly.

“We’re all from somewhere. Everyone knows who he played for,” Van Pelt said. “There’s no reason to pretend like he doesn’t have passion for this team. Lean into that.”

Even if he were employed by the Eagles, the media world isn’t as strict about those relationships as it once was. Fox has no problem with Brady as its top analyst despite his ownership bid with the Las Vegas Raiders, although he won’t be permitted to meet with teams or criticize officials in the booth. Fox also allowed Greg Olsen to call an NFL game while he was still a member of the Carolina Panthers, and Kelce joined Amazon’s Thursday Night Football studio show as a guest analyst last season during the Eagles’ bye week.

In a way, Kelce is fortunate that ESPN is getting the Eagles early and out of the way, so it won’t be a talking point all season. They’ll also be heading into their Monday Night Football game fresh off defeating the Green Bay Packers in Brazil, making it a bit easier for Kelce to avoid the type of honest criticism he knows he might be called upon to give as the season progresses.

“As long as I do it in the right way, and say it in the right way, which I will, I think when you’re critical, it’s not a negative thing,” Kelce said.

While Kelce is enjoying his current media stardom, he always anticipated becoming a coach one day. Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said as much to Hall of Fame coach turned NBC analyst Tony Dungy ahead of the win against the Packers, praising Kelce’s input on a quarterback sneak play the Birds scored a touchdown on during their Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs.

“There’s only so many ways you can interact with the game of football once you’re done playing. It’s either coaching or the media,” Kelce said. “I think with where I am now, coaching is selfishly too much of a time and effort commitment away from my family. I can do a good job at media and be a great husband and father the way I want to do it.”

“Maybe that still happens one day,” Kelce said of coaching. “Hopefully a while from now.”

So far, there’s no indication Kelce will be forced through ESPN’s gantlet of studio shows during the day, which includes Get Up!, First Take, and The Pat McAfee Show.

Ahead of Monday Night Football tonight, Kelce has made exactly one appearance on the network, when he debuted as a studio analyst ahead of the annual Hall of Fame game in July. Kelce also will be hosting the third season of New Heights and appearing on WIP-FM every Thursday morning to talk about the Eagles.

But that doesn’t mean ESPN hosts like Stephen A. Smith and Mike Greenberg aren’t going to try their best to book him.

“I’d love to get him on Get Up!, obviously,” Greenberg said. “He’s endlessly credible, a great player at a position that tend to end up as really, really good analysts … And he has this hugely genuine monster personality.”

“All my teammates are welcome on First Take, all of them. Because that’s what makes the show go,” Smith said. “I’ve been blessed and fortunate enough to have a slew of folks at ESPN that when I call, they come.”

“He’s got an incredible personality,” Smith added. “And his brother is dating one of the biggest superstars in the world. So the opportunity to piggyback off that would not be a bad thing.”