Is Cam Jurgens Ready To Replace Jason Kelce?

The Jason Kelce era is over. The future Hall of Famer retired yesterday with an emotional 40-minute speech. So now, the Cam Jurgens era begins. Kelce hand-picked him as his eventual replacement two drafts ago. He sat his entire rookie season but played RG last season. The question becomes, is he ready, and capable, of replacing Jason Kelce?

Let's first point out, we should not expect him to be as great as Kelce. Kelce is one of the best centers of all time. If we go in with the expectation that Jurgens needs to be that good, we are going to be let down. The question is not, "can he be as good as Kelce?" The question is, "can he be a good or great center?"

Jurgens was solid in his first season. He was not spectacular, but he was dependable. He was the weakest of the starting 5 Linemen, but that is not really a knock on him given how great the other 4 guys are. Jurgens was playing out of position, and taking the first snaps of his NFL career.

Of course there was going to be growing pains. He is not a guard, he is a center. It may not seem like a big difference, but it is a big transition given he never took snaps at Guard in college.

He battled some injuries and struggled in some games. Pass Protection seemed to be particularly challenging for him at times. He gave up no official sacks, but he did allow 22 pressures. For reference, Kelce allowed only 11 despite playing nearly twice as many snaps. In fact, Kelce has only 3 seasons in his entire career where he gave up 22 or more pressures.

All of this to say, Jurgens has some stuff he needs to work on. But he is not without good qualities. And Jason Kelce himself has said he sees a lot of himself in Jurgens.

People love to compare players coming out of the draft to active players. It is a decent way to let people know what type of game a player the draft pick is. Often it is just pure hyperbole though. We heard people say Jordan Matthews is like Calvin Johnson. But in this case, Jason Kelce is the one who compared Cam Jurgens to himself.

If you want something who is going to be able to block downfield, Cam Jurgens is a great option. Like Kelce he converted to playing center in college. It gives him an athletic edge over most prototypical centers.

It also means he is maybe a bit undersized. Being undersized didn't hold Kelce back, so maybe Jurgens can overcome it too. But there were moments early in Kelce's career where he did struggle with it. So Jurgens may need a similar grace period.

All of that said, he has the tools, and a great O-Line Coach to work with. There is going to be a drop-off. But that has more to do with losing Kelce than it does with how good Jurgens is. With his skill set, and Jeff Stoutland's knack for getting the most out of every O-Lineman, Jurgens should at the very least be a dependable center. We will have to wait and see if he can truly follow in Kelce's footsteps though.

Jason Kelce is calling it a career. There were reports immediately following the playoff game that it was over. Adam Schefter reported it the following day. You could almost tell with the way he was acting after the game. But we still hadn't heard it from the man himself. Taht changed today. Jason Kelce spoke to the media today and announced he is calling it a career.

Kelce is easily one of the most beloved players in the Eagles' history. Not just for how great he is on the field, but for what he has done off of it. This year marked the 6th time he made the All-Pro first team. Only 5 other centers made at least 6 All-Pro teams. Only 1 did so in the last 50 years. What makes it more impressive is he made all of them after turning 30. Kelce closed out his career by being named the best center in 6 of his final 7 seasons.

He will walk into Canton one day. The Eagles will almost certainly retire his number one day. But Eagles fans don't need any of those accolades to know how great Kelce is.

With Centers, it is hard to put together a highlight reel. A lot of what offensive linemen do does not necessarily get noticed by fans on a play-to-play basis. Jason Kelce changed that bit. There are so many big plays in the last 13 seasons where you will see Jason Kelce downfield leading the way for the ball carrier. Kelce changed the position. Forcing teams to look for more agile centers like him, as opposed to the old-school brick wall we often saw play center in the past.

So in honor of his great career, let's look back on some of our fondest Jason Kelce memories.

The parade speech is what took Kelce from being a great player, and turned him into an Eagles legend. Every Eagles fan will remember his speech about how much people doubted the Eagles for the rest of time. People knew and liked him before the speech. But it was only after the speech that he became nearly everybody's favorite player.

This is less about the play itself, and more just a representative of the types of blocks he made his whole career. Here we saw Kelce block Mason Foster 14 yards down field, and then make an additional block to lead the way for a Darren Sproles TD. No other center had the knack for making blocks downfield the way Kelce did. And this was one of his most impressive blocks.

Jason Kelce has a future in broadcasting. He has dipped his toes in it a bit during his career. Kelce joined the Thursday Night Football crew earlier this year during the Eagles' bye week. And he has shown he has the personality, and the smarts, to do the job. But my favorite moment of him in front of the camera came from when he joined Bleacher Report to cover the draft. And we got his live reaction to the Eagles trading for AJ Brown. He also had a great reaction to the Eagles drafting Jordan Davis earlier in the night.

One of the craziest parts of Kelce's game is how fast he is for a center. It goes along with what he talked about earlier with him making downfield blocks. But we saw earlier this season, that even at 36, he can still move. Most centers don't move like this. Kelce was at the end of his career and still doing it.

It's not just on the field though that Kelce made magic happen. He did it in the recording studio too. The Eagles Christmas album has been a highlight in each of the past two seasons. And while his voice may be the weakest of the 3 Eagles Linemen, it still was just another thing to add to his legacy.

On top of all the awards he won from the NFL, he also received an award this year that no one but his wife saw coming. People Magazine made him a finalist for The Sexiest Man Alive. There is a reason they call him Sexy Batman.

Perhaps the craziest thing about Kelce's career, is how healthy he has been. Playing center takes its toll. Just go watch his Amazon Prime Doc to see the injuries Kelce deals with on a day-to-day basis. But he always played. He got injured in his 2nd season, and since then never missed a single game. He broke Jon Runyan's franchise record for consecutive starts. With his retirement, his streak will end at 157 games. For an offensive lineman to be that dependable, is incredibly impressive.

Perhaps the biggest reason we love him, is he just gets Philly fans. He proved that during his retirement speech.

Thank you for everything Jason.