Jason Kelce: Expectations are f—ing nothing
Center Jason Kelce has been one of the Eagles’ heart-and-soul players for years, perhaps best illustrated by his legendary speech at Philadelphia’s championship parade after winning Super Bowl LII.
But on Wednesday, he once again delivered a strong message to his team — though this time it was through the media. Kelce was first asked about having a greater comfort level with Nick Sirianni entering the head coach’s second season. Kelce began by saying it’s natural for the team to be more comfortable in Year Two of any system.
“But to be honest, I don’t like comfort. I think comfort is a fucking terrible place to be if you are in this league,” Kelce said, via Eliot Shorr-Parks of SportsRadio 94 WIP. “I know everybody expects us to be Super Bowl champions in Philadelphia right now and I think that can definitely happen. But it isn’t going to happen being comfortable, I can guarantee you that.
“It is going to happen respecting your opponents, it is going to happen respecting the game, and understanding if you don’t go out there and fucking work every single day, if you don’t go out there with the mindset that there are things we need to work on and improve on even single day — you don’t get to that mindset being comfortable. So I hope he is not comfortable. I hope he is very uncomfortable.”
Kelce later discussed the Eagles’ raised expectations for 2022 after making the postseason last year and making several high-profile improvements.
“I think when the expectations are high you tend to let little things go,” Kelce said. “After a win, the tape gets assessed differently. After a loss, the tape gets critical very, very much because people start feeling it. You have to improve everything when you lose. After a win it is like ‘Eh well was that a bad play, it was 50/50, eh.’ It goes a little bit by the wayside.
“I think when you are expected to do well organizationally, player-wise, team wise, coaching wise, all of those little things start to be like, ‘Eh, we’ll get that fixed.’ As opposed to when the expectations are low it is, ‘We have to fix everything right fucking now otherwise we are getting fired. Otherwise, people are going to be on the streets.’
“I think we have enough older guys around this building, I think we have enough executives, coaches, or players to understand that expectations are just that — they are fucking nothing. And we have to go out there and play. We have to go out there. And the moment you are comfortable in this league, somebody is coming for you. We got Mr. T in Rocky III. He is going to be hunting us every single week. We haven’t won fucking nothing yet. We aren’t even the champion. So we better work our asses off.”
High expectations or not, it’s difficult to think the Eagles won’t work to fulfill their potential as long as Kelce is around.
Jason Kelce: Expectations are f—ing nothing originally appeared on Pro Football Talk