Was scrolling Twitter last night and saw people absolutely crushing Joe Giglio for this:

Almost 600 replies and 300 quote tweets on that. One follower said he was putting Giglio on mute for four months and another guy blocked him.

I went back and listened to some of the show, and the explanation is actually reasonable. Joe’s premise is that the Eagles have Kelce’s replacement already lined up, and because they’ve got so many free agents and holes to fill, that elevating Cam Jurgens and spreading around Kelce’s money would be the better business decision.

Couple of points on that:

  1. Jurgens was a second round pick. Jason Kelce played a role in selecting his replacement, who basically sat on the bench this season and played only 35 snaps. It’s one thing to draft a QB and sit him, but if we do two full seasons of stashing a second round center and waste 50% of his rookie scale contract years, then it’s not exactly ideal.
  2. If Isaac Seumalo does not return, you could use Jurgens at guard, but that seems to be a less popular idea. Did the Eagles draft Kelce’s replacement to sit for a full year, then play guard for a full year, and then finally replace Jason in year three?
  3. You have to pay Jalen Hurts obviously, which takes up a huge chunk of cap space.
  4. Kelce’s contract situation is funky. It’s one of those Howie Roseman void year specials. Last year he was on a $14 million deal that contained a ton of fake money and other assorted bullshit. Let’s just say for the purposes of this exercise that his cap hit would be something around ~$10 million this year. Ballpark figure.
  5. There’s dead cap off the back end regardless, because of Howie’s restructuring.
  6. The argument is that Kelce’s money would be better used on keeping 1-2 free agents around.


Basically you’re just asking yourself if you’d rather have Kelce back and pay significant money to a center AND a quarterback, or elevate Jurgens and then try to keep James Bradberry and/or Javon Hargrave around instead. It’s hard to do the hypothetical since we’re just guessing at what these dollar amounts might look like, but Joe’s take can be summed up as something like “is keeping Jason Kelce around the best business decision?”

The thing that’s impossible to know is how good Cam Jurgens really is. Nobody has a clue. So in doing this hypothetical, you’re hoping there’s not THAT MUCH of a drop off from Kelce to Jurgens, or else his retirement is a detriment and not a benefit. Ultimately you want as much cap flex as possible, but you also don’t want to suffer a huge dip at the center position by letting a six-time Pro Bowl player retire.

Hot take radio is annoying, but there’s legitimate nuance to the Kelce topic. I know Jason is a legend here, and a fan favorite, but when you put aside the emotional part of it, there are some legitimate practical considerations on the business side, if he were to call it a career and walk away.