Jason Kelce had trouble coming up with the right word.
He was trying to explain what he felt when he lacked confidence early in the 2016 season. He paused for a while before settling on “upsetting” as another reporter suggested the word “unfamiliar.” He thought that fit pretty well too.
The feeling was that and more.
“I was at a point in my career, it was a very unnerving point,” Kelce said, finding another pretty good word to explain it. “You start asking yourself, you start questioning your own abilities. You start questioning, am I good enough? What’s going on? Why am I struggling? And it really forces you to self-analyze what’s going on.”
Kelce, 30, heard all the criticisms. He heard pundits and fans claim he was too small, that he just gets pushed around. He heard them say he didn’t have it anymore.
And none of that hurt nearly as much as kind of believing them.
“Not knowing that you can do it,” Kelce said, “lacking that was the biggest eye-opening for me. … I think all of that rolling up into for the first time in my career, I was like ‘this is crazy. I don’t know if I can really do this. Maybe I can’t. Maybe I don’t have it anymore.’ Then, obviously, it’s even better when you realize that you do. You come back and you correct all the things.”
NFL
Over the last year, Kelce hasn’t shied away from admitting his flaws during that stretch. He knew he didn’t play well in 2016, specifically during the beginning of that season and he openly admitted that he knew he could be on his way out if he didn’t play better.
Coming into the 2017 Super Bowl season, Kelce wasn’t sure about his future. There were plenty of trade rumors about him and he probably would have been available for the right price. Good thing the Eagles didn’t pull that trigger. Because in 2017, Kelce returned to his former Pro Bowl form. And, yes, the irony of making the Pro Bowl last year and not this year when he actually deserved it isn’t lost on him.
“I think with all the criticisms and everything, they weren’t unwarranted,” Kelce said on Tuesday. “I really did play bad, especially the start of the 2016 season. I had a really bad start. All of those criticisms and everybody questioning whether I was the right guy actually forced me to reevaluate some of the things I was doing, forced me to have a real conversation with myself about how I can get better, how I can get back to playing at that level. I think it made me a much better player this year having gone through that.”
What turned things around for Kelce was shoring up his technique. He credited Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland for helping him with that. Kelce tried to explain what happened: he was trying to get better but while doing so, lost track of basic fundamentals, the things that allowed him to thrive as an undersized center.
Of course, Kelce fixed all those things, played at a high level in 2017, won the Super Bowl and gave the most epic speech in Philadelphia sports history.
On Tuesday, he could only laugh about how far he’s come.