Jason Kelce: Career Stats, Retirement, and Life After the Eagles

Who Is Jason Kelce? NFL Career, Legacy, and What He’s Doing Now

The Short Answer

Jason Daniel Kelce spent 13 years as the starting center for the Philadelphia Eagles, won Super Bowl LII, earned seven Pro Bowl selections and six first-team All-Pro honors, and retired in March 2024 as one of the most decorated offensive linemen in NFL history. He’s 38 years old, originally from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and is Travis Kelce’s older brother. Since retiring, he co-hosts the New Heights podcast and works as an analyst on ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown.

That’s the quick version. Everything below fills in why those facts matter.

Where He Came From

Kelce was born November 5, 1987, the son of Ed Kelce, a steel industry sales rep, and Donna Kelce, who built a career in banking. Growing up in Cleveland Heights, he played football, hockey, and lacrosse, and also played baritone saxophone in the school’s jazz and symphonic bands. He was not a blue-chip recruit.

At the University of Cincinnati, he started as a walk-on. He lined up at running back, then fullback, then finally settled at center — not because it was his first choice, but because that’s where the team needed him and where his football instincts fit best. He started 26 games at left guard and 12 at center before graduating with a marketing degree in 2010. His brother Travis arrived at Cincinnati in 2008, and the two briefly played together.

At the 2011 NFL Scouting Combine, Kelce ran the fastest 40-yard dash among all offensive linemen — a 4.89. Still, he wasn’t drafted until the sixth round, 191st overall, by the Philadelphia Eagles. His agent called with the news and told him the fit was perfect. That turned out to be right.

13 Seasons, One Team

Kelce started all 16 games in his rookie year — the first rookie center to do that in Eagles history. A partially torn MCL and ACL knocked him out for most of 2012, but he came back in 2013 graded as the best center in the league by Pro Football Focus. His first Pro Bowl selection followed in 2014.

What came after was a sustained level of excellence that’s hard to put in context without the numbers. Six first-team All-Pro selections. Seven Pro Bowls. All six All-Pro nods came after he turned 30, making him the player with the most All-Pro selections in their 30s in NFL history. He played 193 games, all of them in Eagles green, number 62.

His 2017 season was probably his peak, at least by the metrics. PFF graded him as the highest-rated offensive lineman in the league. He won Run Blocker of the Year. And then, in February 2018, the Eagles beat the New England Patriots 41-33 in Super Bowl LII, ending 52 years without a championship in Philadelphia.

In March 2022, Kelce signed a one-year, $14 million deal with the Eagles that made him the highest-paid center in NFL history at the time. He was 34.

What Made Him Hard to Block Against — or Block For

The center position is specific. You snap the ball, anchor the middle of the offensive line, and make protection calls before every play — reading the defense and assigning blocking responsibilities to the guards and tackles around you. It requires physical toughness, but also the football intelligence to process defensive fronts in about two seconds.

Kelce stood 6-foot-3 and played at 295 pounds, undersized by NFL center standards. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said he compensated by learning to use angles and movement in ways that “revolutionized his position.” The combination of that speed — rare for any lineman, let alone a center — and his ability to reach the second level of the defense on running plays made him the engine of one of the best offensive lines in football during the mid-2010s.

He was also central to the Eagles’ “tush push,” the quarterback sneak play that became a signature of their offense and that Kelce once explained takes more technical precision than it looks. His 92 percent success rate comment on that play is where the New Heights fanbase name — “92 percenters” — came from.

The 2018 Parade Speech

On February 8, 2018, Jason Kelce stood on a stage at the Philadelphia Museum of Art during the Eagles’ Super Bowl championship parade and gave a speech while wearing a full mummers costume — an enormous green glittery jacket, an oversized hat, a look that belongs on New Year’s Day in South Philly, not at a championship rally.

He’d been drinking beers handed to him by fans along the route. The speech was not prepared. It ran for several minutes, involved a fair amount of profanity, and included a line that became immediately quotable: a description of the Eagles’ roster as a collection of hungry dogs who nobody believed in.

The speech was specific to that team, that city, that moment. Philadelphia has always defined itself by the underdog identity, and Kelce delivered exactly the kind of unfiltered, emotionally real statement that makes someone a folk hero rather than just a famous athlete. People who weren’t Eagles fans knew who he was after that afternoon.

Super Bowl LVII — Brothers on Opposite Sidelines

The 2023 Super Bowl was unusual in NFL history: Jason Kelce’s Eagles faced Travis Kelce’s Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII, the first time two brothers played against each other in a Super Bowl. Kansas City won 38-35.

It was a strange situation handled in a very public way. Jason wore Chiefs gear to root for his brother in the AFC Championship. His wife Kylie Kelce, for the record, refused to wear anything other than Eagles colors at any point during the season. Jason’s Amazon Prime documentary, Kelce, filmed in 2022 and released on September 11, 2023 — where it became the number one movie on Prime Video within 24 hours — captured much of that year and the complexity of competing interests within the family.

Retirement and What Happened After

After the Eagles lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Wild Card round in January 2024, ESPN reported that Kelce had told his teammates he was retiring. He spent a few days reconsidering publicly, then made it official on March 4, 2024, in a press conference that lasted about 40 minutes. He thanked teammates, coaches, family, and fans in detail. He cried. Most people watching did too.

He played 193 games. All for the same team.

In 2024, he joined ESPN as part of the Monday Night Countdown pregame crew. That November, he announced a late-night sports talk show on ESPN called They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelce, which debuted January 4, 2025. His post-retirement career has already covered more media ground in a shorter time than most players manage across an entire second career.

In early 2026, he appeared in NASCAR, joining the pit crew for Hendrick Motorsports at the Ag-Pro 300 at Talladega Superspeedway. The car won.

New Heights — How a Podcast Became a $100 Million Brand

The New Heights podcast launched September 8, 2022. The name is a reference to Cleveland Heights, where both brothers grew up. The format is simple: Jason and Travis talk for roughly two hours every week about football, their lives, pop culture, and each other.

Within weeks of launch, it was the most-listened-to sports podcast on Spotify. The January 2023 Super Bowl matchup between the two brothers gave it a major boost. Travis’s relationship with Taylor Swift, which became public in 2023, pushed the show into a category that barely resembles traditional sports media. According to Billboard data from 2025, 58 percent of New Heights listeners are female.

In August 2024, the show signed a deal with Amazon’s podcast studio Wondery reportedly worth more than $100 million, covering exclusive ad sales and distribution. By end of 2024, it had 2.5 million subscribers.

August 2025 produced the show’s biggest single moment: Taylor Swift announced her twelfth studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, on the podcast. The YouTube premiere drew 1.3 million concurrent viewers, setting a Guinness World Record for most concurrent views for a podcast on the platform. The episode gained over 10 million views in under 24 hours and caused a 3,000 percent spike in new podcast listeners on Spotify, per platform data.

Before the podcast, Jason says he and Travis sometimes went two or three months without talking during the football season. Now they spend two hours on the phone every week, on record.

Jason and Travis — The Older Brother Story

Travis started at Cincinnati in 2008, one year after Jason. In 2010, Travis tested positive for marijuana and received a one-year suspension. The Cincinnati coaching staff was prepared to move on. Jason lobbied them to give his brother another chance. They did. Travis switched from quarterback to tight end, found his position, and built a career that includes three Super Bowl rings and ten Pro Bowl selections with the Kansas City Chiefs.

That intervention is not a small footnote. It’s probably the most consequential thing Jason Kelce has ever done.

The two brothers also share Croatian heritage, revealed in a January 2025 episode of New Heights — both their maternal great-grandmother and grandmother were born to parents of Croatian descent.

Their parents, Ed and Donna Kelce, are a consistent presence in the story. Donna Kelce became famous during the 2023 Super Bowl week for wearing a split jersey supporting both sons. She has a master’s degree and has spent her career in banking and housing finance.

Kylie Kelce and Family

Jason and Kylie Kelce have four daughters. Kylie Kelce has built her own public profile — she appeared on New Heights in May 2026 discussing life as an NFL spouse, the family’s Easter traditions, and her strong opinions about Dallas Cowboys fans. She has been consistently and refreshingly willing to have a point of view in public.

Jason has spoken openly about his weight since retiring. Playing at 295 pounds for 13 years, then suddenly not training for professional football, has been a disorienting experience. He said on record that as he loses weight, public reaction has shifted in ways that surprised him.

The family lives in Philadelphia and remains closely tied to the Eagles community. Both Jason and Kylie are involved with the Eagles Autism Foundation.

The Hall of Fame Question

He’s not in yet. Players must be retired for five years before they’re eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which means Kelce can first appear on the ballot in 2029.

The statistical case is strong: six first-team All-Pros, seven Pro Bowls, one Super Bowl ring, 193 games played at one franchise. He is one of only two centers in NFL history to earn both a Pro Bowl selection and first-team All-Pro honors in three consecutive seasons — the other is Dwight Stephenson of the Miami Dolphins. Pro Football Reference does not yet list him as a Hall of Famer. That will change.

Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, at Kelce’s retirement, said simply: “There can be none better.”

The thing worth adding is that the statistical argument almost undersells him. His presence in the Eagles locker room, his role in Jalen Hurts’s development as a leader, his ability to pass institutional knowledge through a franchise while never drawing attention away from his teammates — those things don’t show up in a box score. Sports Illustrated’s retirement piece described his legacy as “adaptability, finding ways that most believe don’t exist.” That’s harder to quantify than All-Pro selections, and probably more accurate.

Career at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Jason Kelce in the Pro Football Hall of Fame?
Not yet. He retired in March 2024 and won’t be eligible until 2029 under the five-year waiting rule. His induction is widely expected.

What team did Jason Kelce play for?
Only the Philadelphia Eagles, for his entire 13-year career from 2011 through 2023.

How is Jason Kelce related to Travis Kelce?
Jason is Travis’s older brother by two years. Both grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and both played at the University of Cincinnati before entering the NFL.

What is the New Heights podcast?
A weekly podcast launched in September 2022 by Jason and Travis Kelce. It covers NFL news, personal stories, and pop culture. It has a reported $100 million-plus deal with Amazon’s Wondery and 2.5 million subscribers as of late 2024.

What did Jason Kelce do after retiring from football?
He joined ESPN as an analyst on Monday Night Countdown in 2024 and launched a late-night ESPN sports talk show called They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelce in January 2025.

What was the famous parade speech?
After the Eagles won Super Bowl LII in 2018, Kelce gave an unscripted speech at the championship parade wearing a mummers costume. It became one of the most-replayed moments in Philadelphia sports history — an emotional defense of the team’s underdog identity, delivered in front of roughly a million fans.

Did Jason Kelce’s Eagles ever play Travis Kelce’s Chiefs in the Super Bowl?
Yes. Super Bowl LVII in February 2023 was the first Super Bowl in NFL history to feature brothers on opposing teams. The Chiefs won 38-35.