The Kelce brothers have a message for anyone obsessing over NFL training camp clips: chill out.
On the latest episode of their New Heights podcast, Travis and Jason Kelce unloaded on the trend of practice footage flooding social media. The trigger? A viral clip of Travis running a seemingly lackadaisical route during a one-on-one drill against the Chargers' Alohi Gilman. The video racked up over six million views on X, with fans questioning whether the 36-year-old tight end still has the juice to get open at his age.
But the Kelces say that's exactly the problem—people are drawing wild conclusions from a snippet that shows almost nothing.
Practice isn't a game
Jason, the recently retired Eagles center, didn't mince words. "I can't stand when they put these clips online," he said. "Can we just let practice be its own thing? We don't need to show everything."
He argued that practice should be a safe space for players to experiment without fear of being judged. "To me, if there's one safe space that a guy should feel good about, like, 'I'm gonna try this new thing. It might not work out, but I'm going to try it in practice, but it's not a game.' And then all of a sudden … now it lives forever on social media," Jason explained.
Travis, meanwhile, insisted that his slow-looking route was actually a calculated move. "You don't see everything that's out there," he said. "They just saw how slow that route was, and what they don't realize is that that route is based off of 100 other routes that I've ran at camp, and I'm setting up that move or I'm trying to entice that move. And I'm going so slow it's like I'm feeding you what you want to try and jump the route that you think I'm gonna run."
In other words, what looks like a lack of effort might just be a veteran playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.
The brothers' frustration echoes a broader sentiment among players who feel that training camp footage is often taken out of context. It's a topic that's been buzzing around the league, especially after the Eagles were accused of throwing Jalen Hurts under the bus with a practice clip earlier this summer.
Jason, who's set to join ESPN's booth for four NFL games this season, knows a thing or two about the spotlight. But he's hoping fans and media alike will ease up on the constant scrutiny of practice reps.
"Let practice be practice," he reiterated. "You don't know what guys are working on. You don't know if they're running at 50 percent or 75 percent or 100 percent. Just let it be."
So next time you see a clip of a star player jogging through a drill, remember: it's just practice. The real test comes on Sundays.
