Jason Kelce spent this past weekend watching his first Eagles game since his retirement – and he found the experience to be a bit strange.
Kelce, who retired from the NFL earlier this year after spending his entire career with Philly, will have been pleased with the Eagles’ 34-29 win over the Packers in Brazil.
But he still found the experience of watching his former team from afar to be jarring, as he explained on the latest episode of ‘New Heights’ how helpless he felt.
‘It was weird,’ he said. ‘It was weird watching the game. The last time I watched [an Eagles] game was when I was out of the lineup in 2014 with a sports hernia injury. It felt weird watching and not really being able to do anything.
‘Especially not even being on the sidelines or anything… you’re watching the game and you want to know why certain things are happening, or what happened here, or what are we getting to? You just feel more like… you’re just taking the game in and you’re like, eurgh.’
Jason Kelce divulged how it was ‘weird’ to watch the Eagles from afar on Friday night
The Eagles took down the Packers in Brazil behind a big game from Saquon Barkley (second-L)
While Kelce’s former teammates were at the Arena Corinthians in Sau Paulo, the former center revealed that he watched the game in the basement of a Philly staffer.
‘I thought it’d be fun to watch my first game in retirement with a guy that I’d been with my entire career with the Eagles, who still works there but now he doesn’t travel with the team,’ he began.
‘So I was with Joe O’Pella, Trainer Joe. I was down there watching it in his den, basement area. So we were watching the game together, it was kinda cool watching it with him.
‘I was tweeting to avoid the distraction of not being able to do anything, I was probably over-tweeting to be honest with you.’
Despite any nerves Kelce may have felt about the game, the Eagles held on for the win to began their season 1-0.
The 36-year-old, however, did have more control over his TV debut, as he joined ESPN’s Monday Night Football coverage for the first time before the Jets fell to the 49ers.
Jason Kelce was a natural as he appeared on ESPN for his first assignment as an analyst
He made quite the first impression as he explained how he forgot his luggage and needed to buy an apparently ill-fitting shirt at the mall.
‘It fits my belly now I’ve lost a little bit of weight but my t**s are still struggling,’ Kelce told host Scott Van Pelt about his shirt.
Nonetheless, fans were pleased with performance from San Francisco, with some claiming that his TV debut was better than Tom Brady’s.
Kelce will be back on the air this Monday ahead of the Falcons’ trip to his Eagles.
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