Jason Kelce Believes Eagles' Culture too Strong to Let Locker Room Divide

PHILADELPHIA – Quarterback controversies can divide locker rooms, and in the Eagles’ case one might think there is a faction who wants Carson Wentz to be the starting quarterback and another faction in the corner of Jalen Hurts being the starting quarterback.

Granted, locker rooms are a lot different place these days with COVID-19 restrictions limiting access and social distancing required. Still, players have tendencies to take sides no matter what the format looks like.

It could be going on with the Eagles after head coach Doug Pederson benched Wentz and inserted Hurts into the starting role.

Veteran center and team leader Jason Kelce has been with quarterback Carson Wentz for the last five years, but even he recognized the need to make a change, though not putting the blame squarely on Wentz’s back. Nor does Kelce believe the locker room will splinter.

“From the moment (Wentz) came in his rookie year, I thought he transformed our offense, and that’s not just him as a player, that’s him as a person, the intelligence he brings, the athleticism he brings, the competitiveness he brings, made a tangible difference in practice every day and on game day,” said Kelce on Wednesday.

“It’s kind of hard to believe we’re at this point now, to be honest with you. This season has not gone the way any of us anticipated or would have liked it to have gone Sitting here 3-8-1, you gotta do something.”

That something was drastic, but the divide won't happen, at least Kelce believes it won't, and if it does, well, here's what he had to say:

“We all got jobs. We're all here for a reason. We're here to be Philadelphia Eagles, and part of that job entails going out there and do everything you can in the situation, in the parameters that you're being asked to do your job. And I think that we are all not just professionals, but good people. We care about each other. The first and foremost job of being a Philadelphia Eagle is to be a good teammate, and that entails giving of yourself to others, doing everything you can to help the person next to you succeed.”

The center talked about the strength of the team’s culture, and, if players don’t want to accept that, then, Kelce said those players “should be on the first ticket out of here because that's not the culture of the team that I want to be on.”

Kelce said Pederson’s leadership through this QB transition has been “phenomenal.”

“Doug's doing a great job of making sure the guys are staying together, making sure guys are fighting, that's all you can do,” he said. “Just keep coming to work, keep going and at the very least, in my opinion, on game day, you see guys giving effort, you see guys trying, you see guys fighting for each other even though it hasn't turned into success, we've been in most of these games and we've fought to the end of the road and now we just got to figure out some things on how to turn these close games into wins.”

Kelce’s thoughts on the shift to Hurts in order to try to make that happen was necessitated not just due to the failures of Wentz, but so much else.

He made that clear when he was asked if drafting Hurts damaged Wentz’s confidence.

“This more comes down to a failure of pretty much every position, including the coaches, to facilitate a functioning offense, and that's the biggest story here, not that Jalen Hurts was picked and there was some sort of internal battle and struggle going on with Carson Wentz, I don't buy that,” said Kelce.

The center said that he does not believe this is the end of Wentz.

“I have no doubt,” said Kelce, “that this is not the final to the Carson Wentz story or saga.”

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