Kelce rails against comfort, expectations in expletive-filled rant

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Jason Kelce knows all about the high expectations for the Eagles as they prepare to enter the 2022 season.

Some think the Eagles are the favorites to win the NFC East, some think they might be Super Bowl bound. But Kelce on Wednesday had a very pointed message about all that talk:

Bleep those expectations.

“Expectations are just that. They’re f— nothing,” Kelce said. “We gotta go out there and play. The moment you’re comfortable in this league, somebody’s coming for you. We got Mr. T in Rocky 3. He’s going to be hunting us every single week. And we haven’t won f— nothing yet. We’re not even the champion so we better work our asses off.”

Going into his 12th NFL season, Kelce has seen pretty much everything in his career. Earlier this offseason, he noted that when the expectations have been high for the Eagles, they’ve failed to live up to them, while some of their best seasons have come out of the blue.

There’s a danger in all this.

“I think when the expectations are high, you tend to let little things go,” Kelce explained.

He compared it to how tape is dissected after a win vs. after a loss. How some mistakes are overlooked with a win when they shouldn’t be. Similarly, if a team starts to believe its own hype, it might lose that sense of urgency.

“When the expectation is low,” Kelce said, “it’s like, ‘We gotta fix everything right f— now otherwise we’re getting fired. Otherwise people are going to be out on the streets.’”

It was a fairly innocuous question on Wednesday that set Kelce off. He was asked about Nick Sirianni’s comfort level as he enters Year 2 as the head coach of the Eagles. Kelce agreed that Sirianni will naturally be more comfortable in the city, in the building and around the team in Year 2.

But that word — comfort — stuck in his craw.

And then he let it out.

“But to be honest, I don’t like comfort,” Kelce said. “I think comfort is a f— terrible place to be if you’re in this league. I know everybody expects us to be Super Bowl champions in Philadelphia right now but I think that can definitely happen, but it’s definitely not going to happen being comfortable. I can guaranteed you that.

“It’s going to happen respecting your opponents, it’s going to happen respecting the game and understanding that if you don’t go out there and f— work every single day, if you don’t go out there and have the mindset that there are things that we need to work on and improve on every single day, you don’t get to that mindset by being comfortable. I hope he’s not comfortable; I hope he’s very uncomfortable.”

After an offseason where the Eagles added players like A.J. Brown, Haason Reddick, James Bradberry, the list goes on, people were bound to start talking about the Eagles’ being primed for big things.

And maybe they are. But they haven’t accomplished anything yet.

Kelce said that throughout the offseason, he delivered this message to plenty of his teammates. Whether or not he entered the NovaCare Complex auditorium with a plan on Wednesday, he quickly realized what he said in front of cameras would get back to his teammates. The message is an important one.

“I haven’t been that direct about it,” Kelce said. “So maybe a video clip will come out and they’ll see that.”

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