As Eagles’ Jason Kelce considers retirement, he faces a hard fact: Forever ends fast in the NFL | Mike Sielski
Jason Kelce thought about retiring two years ago, when he was 29. And last year, when he was 30. And he will think about it again this offseason, now that he is 31.
NEW ORLEANS – There had been a report that Jason Kelce was likely to retire after this Eagles season ended, and now that it had Sunday night, with a 20-14 loss here to the Saints in the NFC playoffs, Kelce had to be asked if his career was ending, too.
He has been the team’s starting center for eight years and has been one of the NFL’s best players at the position, maybe the best, these last two. Yet there he was, not denying the substance of the report but instead admitting that yes, he has thought about retiring from football. He thought about it two years ago, when he was 29. And last year, when he was 30. And he will think about it again this offseason, now that he is 31. He had not decided anything yet, but he knew he would have to.
“This is a game where I am getting older,” Kelce said to begin an answer that demonstrated just how much thought he had given the topic, “and I think that for the last three years, realistically, I’ve tried to stay in the moment and stay in the season. Then, at the end of the year, you reassess and reevaluate. I certainly have not made any decisions or anything like that. This is the same situation as last year and the year before that. It’s probably a similar situation that Chris Long’s been through the last few years. Nick Foles has mentioned it.
“The reality is, it’s a hard game physically, and the older you get, the competitor in you and the player in you obviously want to keep playing and keep going, and through the rivers of the season, your family and friends are certainly taking the brunt of all the positives and negatives going on. I can’t really stress [enough] that I have not made a decision to retire at all, and this is a season-by-season-basis thing that will probably continue to happen for the rest of my career.”
Again, Kelce is 31, just 31. How many 31-year-olds have to speak this way about the question of ending the only career they’ve ever known, of getting on with their lives? I don’t mean a job change. Lord knows, in this new America, in his new economy, employment in a particular field is more fluid and fleeting than ever. But in how many professions does someone contemplate retirement so soon? Maybe show business. Certainly the military. And in professional sports, especially in professional football.
Kelce spoke of this being a difficult season for him – ups and downs, nagging injuries that he declined to detail. The makeup of the Eagles’ offensive line will probably change next season. Will the teammates with whom Kelce has excelled and grown close be back? Jason Peters is 36 and finally showing signs of decline. Brandon Brooks tore his right Achilles tendon Sunday. Will their futures help to determine Kelce’s? These are factors that he, or anyone in his position, has to consider.
There are others – the sacrifices, for instance, that he and his family made on behalf of his career, the parts of life he wants to enjoy now. And the brutality of the sport that Kelce plays only accelerates those processes. He was single when he entered the NFL in 2011. He’s married now. A man ages. His reality changes. His priorities change. Children. Walking on knees that don’t ache all the time, or knees that do. The euphoria of delivering a crushing block. These things have to be sorted out, placed in perspective.
He had transformed himself, after the Eagles’ Super Bowl victory last year, into an avatar for every joyful Philadelphia sports fan, donning that purple-and-green Mummers costume for the championship parade, shotgunning beers handed to him by passersby as he walked the route. You can do that when you’re an elite athlete, when your body is a wondrous and efficient machine. When you’re not, when it’s not, you can’t, or at least you shouldn’t. Keep up that kind of lifestyle, and you become just a display artist with a too-big belly, a pitiable goofball who used to be somebody, who was part of that fun time long ago.
Now on Sunday night, he dressed in a gray cap and a blue rustic shirt and tan corduroy pants, sunglasses dangling from the shirt’s third button. He picked up a towel to wipe his brow, and tiny beads of sweat sparkled on the thick hair of his forearms, diamonds in tumbleweed. He was asked if winning that Super Bowl, reaching that summit, had informed this thinking on retirement at all.
“Not really,” he said. “If it did, I probably would have retired last year. I really don’t want to keep harping on this because it’s not something that I think is a public matter at this point. Probably the closer it gets to being reality, I’ll go public. … The competitor in you, the player, the teammate – that guy would keep playing forever.”
Yes. Yes, he would. But he can’t, and he won’t. Jason Kelce is 31, just 31, an old man at 31, and no matter what decision he will make, he understands already that in the NFL, forever runs out faster than just about anywhere else.