Jason Kelce has some regrets.
Days after a video of him smashing the phone of a man who allegedly called his brother Travis Kelce a homophobic slur over his romance with Taylor Swift vent viral, the former Philadelphia Eagles player is speaking out.
“I’m just gonna address it,” Jason told his brother in the Nov. 6 episode of their New Heights podcast. “I feel like it needs one more time and then hopefully we can stop talking about this really stupid situation.”
“I’m not happy about the situation, me reacting gave him the time of day and it also gave the situation notoriety,” Jason told his brother. “That’s what I regret. It didn’t deserve attention, it’s really stupid.”
The father of three added that he wishes he simply hadn’t reacted to the heckler.
“If I just keep walking, it’s a f–king nothingburger, nobody sees it,” Jason said. “Now, it’s out there and it just perpetuates more hate.”
During the Nov. 2 incident outside of Beaver Stadium at Penn State University, a man approached Jason with his phone up and asked, “Kelce, how does it feel that your brother is a [homophobic slur] for dating Taylor Swift?”
The ESPN NFL analyst then turned around and responded, “Who’s the [homophobic slur] now?” before smashing the man’s phone.
The 36-year-old continued saying that the “thing that I regret the most is saying that word to be honest with you. The word he used it’s just f–king ridiculous, and it takes it to another level. It’s just off the wall, f–king over the line.”
David Eulitt/Getty Images“It’s dehumanizing and it got under my skin, it elicited a reaction,” Jason went on. “In the heat of the moment, I thought ‘Hey, what can I say back to him? I’m going to throw this s–t right back in his face. F–k him.’ What I do regret, is now there’s a video that is very hateful, that is now online that has been seen by millions of people and I share fault in perpetuating it and having that out there.”
Travis backed his older brother up, praised him for owning his mistakes and urged him to use the situation as a learning lesson.
“The real situation is you had some f–king clown come up to you and talk about your family and you reacted in a way that was defending your family, and you might’ve used some words that you regret using,” he shared. “That’s a situation you’ve just got to learn from and own. I think you owning it and you speaking about it shows how sincere you are to a lot of people in this world.”
The Kansas City Chiefs player went on to vouch for Jason’s character, telling him, “You don’t choose hate, that’s just not who you are. I love you brother, I think you said that perfectly.”
Gabriella Ricciardi/MLB Photos via Getty ImagesJason had previously broken his silence on the incident during ESPN’s Nov. 4 episode of Monday Night Countdown.
“I’m not happy with anything that took place. I’m not proud of it,” he said. “And in a heated moment, I chose to greet hate with hate, and I just don’t think that that’s a productive thing.”
“I don’t think that it leads to discourse and it’s the right way to go about things,” Jason continued. “In that moment, I fell down to a level that I shouldn’t have. So, I think the bottom line is, I try to live my life by the golden rule—it’s what I’ve always been taught—I try to treat people with common decency and respect, and I’m going to keep doing that moving forward, even though I fell short this week.”