Jeff Stoutland stood in the back of the room, his hands resting firmly on the backseats of the row in front of him, trying to control his emotions. On the stage inside the Eagles’ auditorium at the team’s NovaCare Complex, seated behind a microphone and wrestling with his own emotion, was Jason Kelce.
It was March 4 and Kelce was giving his retirement speech from the NFL.
His thoughts that day on “Stout” were many, but these words encapsulated what the offensive line coach meant to a career that will someday land Kelce in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“No one has been more influential or meaningful to my success on the field in my career than Stout” he said that day. “I think one of the greatest things a human being can give another is belief. This world, life, it can be hard. It can challenge yourself to points of self-doubt and that is a dangerous place to be.”
Stout provided that beliefe – and more – for Kelce.
The two men have worked together since 2013, two years into Kelce’s career which began as a sixth-round pick just two years earlier. It’s likely Kelce would not have had the career he did without Stout.
Stoutland talked for the first time about Kelce’s retirement during the Eagles’ recently-wrapped minicamp.
“I was very happy for him, but also very sad because I felt like I lost a very close friend and a partner in this whole process,” he said. “But very happy for him, because it was perfect timing and he maximized. That guy, holy smokes, you talk about not leaving anything on the table. He gave everything he had mentally, physically, I don’t know what more you could ask for in a player. That’s all anybody in Philly wants.”
It was a strange spring without Kelce around, but the game is bigger than one person.
Yes, Stoutland and his teammates miss him, but there is a standard in place that players like Kelce and those before him put into place.
“I think in regards as to how we’re doing in the room, I think we’re doing a good job of maintaining the standard,” said left tackle Jordan Mailata. “I’m making it pretty clear, Lane (Johnson) is making it pretty clear, Landon (Dickeron) is making it pretty clear that before any of us even came to the Philadelphia Eagles there was a standard that was set and it was kept up by guys like Jason Kelce, Jason Peters, Lane Johnson, Brandon Brooks, Isaac Seumalo and we have to be able to play to that standard.
“I think holding everybody accountable to that standard from coming in, watching film, and seeing how the standard is being set by the past, and now we have to fill in their shoes and be the present. I think we’re doing a good job right now of really holding that standard high.”
Kelce will still be around. Stoutland said there would be a role for him, though one had yet to be defined. The center-turned-broadcaster will work on Monday night’s NFL Countdown team with ESPN.
As Johnson joked: “We miss him. He’s not going to be working too much. I think just Mondays, so he should be in the building a little bit.”
