Jason Kelce is everywhere. He doesn’t have to be, and if he’s not careful, he’ll learn a hard lesson.

Jason Kelce is getting a late-night talk show on ESPN. He already has a regular panelist spot on Monday Night Football. He already cohosts a popular podcast with his brother, Travis. He already was the subject of a widely watched documentary on Amazon. He already appears weekly on WIP-FM (94.1). He already sings on Christmas albums with Jordan Mailata and Stevie Nicks. He already has endorsement contracts with Old Spice, Tide, Marriott, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Campbell’s Soup, among enough other companies that for a long time it seemed there were only two kinds of commercials permitted on TV anymore: election commercials and Jason Kelce commercials.

He was in State College, Pa., for College GameDay and in Paris for the Olympics and in Buffalo to party with Bills fans and in various stadium parking lots to tailgate with various people at various NFL games. He sometimes strolls through the Eagles locker room on a random weekday, and he sometimes is seen in the company of the most famous recording artist in the world, who might just turn out to be his sister-in-law someday.

In other words, he gets around.

Because he does, Kelce has begun to experience one of the downsides of his growing fame: the reality that — in the age of smartphones and social media, when every person carries a camera in their pocket, when so many people are willing to behave like clowns for the sake of goading someone into an embarrassing, viral incident — he can rarely let his guard down, if ever.

» READ MORE: Jason Kelce to host new ESPN late-night show filmed in Philly

On Thursday night, a man seeking Kelce’s autograph began screaming obscenities at him and continued to do so until Kelce calmly approached, spoke to the man, and signed something for him. At Penn State earlier this month, a fan used a slur in reference to Travis Kelce, and Jason grabbed the man’s phone, threw it to the ground, and repeated the word. He apologized later.

Kelce handled himself with grace on Thursday. And while he shouldn’t have parroted the slur back to that buffoon at Penn State, his reaction was nothing if not human — especially considering that this particular human is 6-foot-3, is close to 300 pounds, and spent 13 years competing in what might be the most physically and emotionally demanding sport of all.

But then, that’s the point here … and the potential problem for Kelce. He is as approachable and authentic as any famous athlete in America, but he’s never more authentic than when he is angry. A 2022 Inquirer profile of him included several anecdotes that showed just how volcanic his temper can be: doors he slammed, windows he broke, trash cans he kicked.

“Jason will get over it, and luckily nobody is hurt other than the trash can, but they’re pretty forgiving,” former Eagles guard Evan Mathis said at the time. “And the thing is, if you really follow it back to whatever it is that triggered him, you can find a way to resonate with the emotion he’s feeling.”

The internet and our quick-judgment culture don’t often allow for that kind of reflection and introspection, though. It will take only one instant in which Kelce loses his cool, one split-second in which he can’t control his emotions, for his reputation and livelihood to be put at risk, and it’s fair to wonder whether he would do well to limit his interactions with the public some. He’s a man of the people, yes, but he doesn’t have to interact with every person he encounters, least of all the yahoos with digital muscles who would love nothing more than to capture him at a low moment, post that video to Instagram or X/Twitter, and get their jollies from the fallout.

» READ MORE: After his brother Travis, Jason Kelce has a new duet partner: his wife, Kylie

Since retiring from the Eagles in January, Jason Kelce has earned millions of dollars simply by being Jason Kelce. Surely there are those who are sick of seeing him every time they turn on their televisions or scroll through their social media feeds. So what? The iron is hot, and he is striking it as frequently as he can while he can. No one should blame him for that. No one should blame him for trying to make the best life possible for himself, his wife, and their three daughters. No one should blame him for trying to make the most of his time in the spotlight, because no one, including Kelce himself, knows when that light will stop shining on him.

It just seems that he’s trying to accommodate everyone he comes across, to be everywhere and do everything for everyone all the time, and he doesn’t have to create those precarious conditions. He doesn’t have to put himself in so many positions to do something he might regret. Be careful, Jason. Just be careful.