Ed and Donna Kelce have slightly different versions of the epic fight between their sons Jason and Travis — the one that resulted in a shattered casserole dish and a shift in the dynamic between the highly competitive brothers.
Both agree it carried over from the basketball court to the kitchen. Jason, a center for the Philadelphia Eagles, was a 6-foot-3 senior in high school in 2006-07. Travis, a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, was a sophomore who had finally grown taller than his big brother, sprouting to 6-5. Travis got the better of Jason that day — at last. Ed recalls Travis rubbing it in until Jason snapped, while Donna believes Jason raised Travis’ ire by cheating on the court to maintain the upper hand.
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No one disputes what happened next.
“They started fighting,” Donna said, “and [Travis] literally drove [Jason] into the floor in the kitchen, and the stove bounced off of the brackets.”
“I’ve got a casserole on the stove, dinner for the two of them. Couldn’t get them moving. Of course, I’m concerned about sharp corners on cabinets, heads cracking on that,” Ed said. “They’re tangled up, so I just grabbed them together, and just go down, and they fall down on top of me. I screamed, ‘Oh my god, my back!’ There was nothing wrong with me, it just hit me: What a great idea. Let’s change the whole dynamic here. And so now everybody’s worried about Dad. They’re not blaming each other, they’re trying to help me up, get me to a chair. And a few minutes later I managed to get up gingerly, walk around. It wasn’t for another half hour, when the casserole was supposed to be done, that I opened the stove and I said, ‘You’re getting pizza again tonight!'”
“I think that’s when both of them finally realized they were equals and that they couldn’t do this anymore,” Donna said. “That was the end of it. No one picked a fight with the other one after that. It was over.”
The years since have brought incredible success for the Kelce brothers. Jason is an All-Pro who has quietly built a compelling case for Hall of Fame consideration over his nine-year career. Travis, an All-Pro for the Super Bowl-winning Chiefs, is arguably the best tight end in the NFL.
They know how to dominate a parade as well. Jason’s emotional “Underdog” speech, delivered in a glistening green Mummers outfit from the “Rocky” steps in celebration of Philadelphia’s first Super Bowl victory after the 2017 season, became instant legend.
The Kelce parents would sign up Jason and Travis for any sport they could — one, because the kids couldn’t get enough of it, and two, because it was a way to burn all that crazy energy the boys were constantly filled with. The trophies started piling up, and it was then that Ed picked up on a difference in their personalities: Travis needed his trophies to be perfectly arranged in his room, while Jason’s were stashed in a box somewhere. Travis’ flair for presentation — and Jason’s disregard of it — was not limited to their trophies. “[Travis] was always a lot more concerned how he looked going to school,” Ed said. “Jason, you’d have to tell him, ‘You can’t wear that. It’s got pizza sauce from last night on it.’ Travis would ask you to iron his jeans. There was always that thing about looking good.” “His clothes, how he was put together, it was very important to [Travis],” Donna said. “His image was very important to him and how other people looked at him and felt about him. Jason is pretty much the type of guy where it’s like you either like me or you don’t, and this is the way I am and I’m not changing. That’s about the only difference between the two of them. What they care about and what they value in life I think is basically the same. It’s just one has a little bit more need to be put together physically and the other one needs to be accepted for who he is.” The only thing that shocked Donna about Jason on parade day was the outfit he wore, because, she says, “I’ve never seen him dress in anything else but a T-shirt and sweatpants.” Well, there was that one time when Jason was a freshman in high school and took a challenge from his hockey team to the extreme. The seniors on the team were putting together a video blog to document their final year at Cleveland Heights High School, and they persuaded Jason to jump into a trash can in the school cafeteria for the good of the project. “He came home and he said, ‘Mom, I need my flippers, I need my goggles, I need my snorkel, and I need a pair of swimming trunks and a pair of breakaway pants.’ And I said, ‘What the heck are you doing?'” said Donna with a laugh. “At lunch, he put the goggles on, put the snorkel in his mouth, ripped away his pants, was standing on a desk and jumped into the trash can. He got in trouble for that one. The vice principal was laughing hysterically when he called me, but he said, ‘I’m going to have to give your son some detention because he was disruptive and people could hear the laughter on the third floor of the school.’ He liked getting a rise and attention out of people, for sure, from a very young age.” Before the Mummers version of Jason Kelce, there was scuba Kelce, diving into a cafeteria trash can at his HS teammates’ urging. The night before Super Bowl LIV, the Kelce family had dinner together at the J.W. Marriott in Miami, where the Chiefs were staying. Between dinner and dessert, the larger table conversation broke into smaller, separate conversations. Jason and Travis began talking as Ed listened in intently. “It starts with a conversation about San Francisco’s defense and it kind of morphs into the differences in the game, the long freaking halftime that I guess all these guys hate and other things that are unique about the game,” Ed said. “And it kind of morphs into a big brother/little brother advice type of thing, where Jason just said, ‘Well, first of all, you have to forget the whole idea that this is the Super Bowl when you’re playing. Put that aside. You don’t have any brand-new ideas, you don’t change what you do because you’re in the Super Bowl. Don’t try to do anything different or special. Rely on your teammates as you always have. Work with the guys. Do what you did to get here.’ “And I’m sitting here and I’m thinking, ‘This is so fricking cool. I’ve got my two kids talking about Super Bowl experiences, and the older boy telling the younger boy how to deal with this and be the best you can be out there.’ A lot of people on this patio have got no clue as to what I’m listening to right there. That was just a really special moment to me.” When the festivities in Miami were over, Donna flew back home, just as she had when Jason and the Eagles beat the New England Patriots to win it all in 2017. The way she sees it, the parades are a special time to be shared between the players and the fans. But like many of us, she was fully entertained as her sons popped up on the television screen in fur coats and Mummers outfits alike, as was Ed, though he could have done without all the F-bombs. “I laughed. They always make me laugh. They always have,” Donna said. “They’re just pure joy. They have a zest for life. They live it to its fullest, no holds barred.”Trash can plunge