The jersey is kind of small on Jason Kelce, but it represents something huge.
Kelce, the Eagles’ three-time all-pro center, walked out to practice Sunday morning wearing a Kobe Bryant No. 33 Lower Merion High School jersey to celebrate what would have been Bryant’s 42nd birthday.
It’s a special day. pic.twitter.com/AMMVCnBeBa
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) August 23, 2020
After practice, Kelce explained where he got the jersey, how he came to be wearing it Sunday and why it's so meaningful to him.
He recalled Bryant speaking to the Eagles on Dec. 8, 2017, at the team hotel in Orange County while the team spent a week practicing on the West Coast between games against the Seahawks and Rams, and the impact that made on him and his teammates.
I didn’t know Kobe that much on a personal level,” Kelce said. “Obviously, he talked to the team in 2017 on the Super Bowl run and made a very big impact pretty much on the entire team. I was able to see him another time at an ESPN event and reiterate to him how much I thought that meant to our team. I’ve heard a lot of motivational speakers throughout the years, and a lot of motivational speakers were players or coaches or whatever, (and) they kind of speak in these age-old mantras or cliches. Kobe was very much not like that. It was a very real conversation. It felt very authentic, and I think that’s why it resonated so much with a lot of guys on the team. It didn’t feel like he was just saying things because it was the right thing to say. He was saying things you could tell he meant and he had thought about.
Two months later, the Eagles won the Super Bowl, and video of Kobe's wild celebration went viral.
Kelce on Sunday recalled Bryant’s message that day in December of 2017:
“It was very evident that he was a very intelligent human being from the way he talked about becoming a better player or what it takes to learn more about the game, to learn more about your opponent,” he said. “And then the drive he had to be great was second to none, and you could feel that just in the way he talked. It was a very moving moment for our team that year, it was a very moving moment for me just to hear the way one of the best basketball players to ever play the game approached business and approached being the best.”
Kelce has a very strong connection to Lower Merion. That’s where his wife Kylie went to high school and where she now coaches field hockey.
“We were at a bar one time in Narberth and they had that jersey on the wall and I bought that a while ago and it just so happened to be sitting in my locker still,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s a little snug so I don’t get to wear it too often, but after Jason Peters told me it was his birthday today I thought it would be a good day to honor a legend from this city, a legend in sports in general.
Kelce wore a Flyer jersey at practice on Friday before the Flyers closed out their playoff series against the Canadiens.
Kelce grew up outside Cleveland, but he’s now as much a Philadelphian as anybody
“That’ll probably be the end of the jersey stuff, but I like to be supportive of not just Philly teams but friends of mine who have been supportive of us before, and obviously this city’s home to me now,” he said. “I’ve been here for a number of years and to be able to settle myself down here has been a tremendous blessing.”
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