A New Documentary Nails Everything That Makes Philly, Well, Philly

Haters say Philadelphia is a city of losers. Real ones know it’s a city of hopefuls who always, endearingly, believe the next win is possible, even if victory is rare. Perhaps that unrelenting optimism and underdog spirit explain why so many iconic sports movies take place in Philly. Ask any non-Philadelphian to name a movie related to the City of Brotherly Love, and they will undoubtedly name the legendary boxing movie Rocky, or, depending on how young they are, maybe Ryan Coogler’s 2015 hit spinoff Creed. There are also football flicks, like the Mark Wahlberg–led Disney biopic Invincible, or the Oscar-winning mental-health-centered romance Silver Linings Playbook. In 2022, Adam Sandler took a turn as an NBA scout for the 76ers in Hustle. There are even some top-tier wrestling flicks, like the star-studded Foxcatcher, which was nominated for five Academy Awards.

But, as a proud Philly native, I must say that a new documentary about one of the city’s most adored football players takes home the prize as the most Philly sports movie ever. Kelce, streaming on Amazon Prime Video, follows Jason Kelce, the 13-year NFL veteran, center for the Philadelphia Eagles, dad of three girls, and older brother to the best tight end in the league, the Kansas City Chiefs’ Travis Kelce. The film opens at the beginning of last year’s NFL season; what was likely intended as a record of a beloved football player’s final run morphed into something much more when the Eagles surprisingly went on an eight-game winning streak and had a final divisional record of 14–3, sending them to the Super Bowl four years after their historic first Super Bowl win in 2018. And then, a documentarian’s miracle: It turned out that the Eagles would be playing the Chiefs in the big championship—for the first time in NFL history, two brothers would face off on sports’ biggest night, a momentous event that earned the moniker “the Kelce Bowl.”

Kelce is so compelling, in part, because it asks a vital question: Is football worth the price that its players, especially the most dedicated ones, must pay? For a time, it seems that the answer might be no. Kelce, recounting the toll that the sport has taken on him—at least seven surgeries, fear of a chronic traumatic encephalopathy diagnosis from repeated head injuries, and a body that can neither play without anti-inflammatory medication nor comfortably exist in the off-season without pain—seriously considers hanging up his helmet.

Philadelphia never seemed like the perfect fit for him on paper: Kelce, having failed to receive a scholarship offer to play collegiate ball, simply tried out for the team as a walk-on at the University of Cincinnati, and though he proved himself worthy of an NFL spot, he was only a sixth-round draft pick in 2011 when the Eagles signed him. But that’s exactly what made him a perfect fit for Philly: He was an underdog who represented a city full of them. Over the course of his 13-season career—during which he only ever played for the Eagles—he went on to embody everything Philadelphia stands for: loyalty, perseverance, grit. He married an Eagles fan (they met on Tinder), with whom he would go on to start a family. At the parade celebrating the Eagles’ first Super Bowl win in 2018, Kelce donned a Mummers costume—harkening to a Philadelphia New Year’s tradition—and delivered a speech, invoking a soccer reference, that has become a rallying cry for fans ever since: “We’re from Philly, fucking Philly, no one likes us, we don’t care.” Kelce’s wholehearted embrace of Philadelphia earned him the city’s love, as well as a reputation as Philly’s favorite player, despite not being a starting quarterback.

But all of that also explains the weight on Kelce’s shoulders as he’s filmed debating whether to return for another season. The 2022 season likely would have been his last in the NFL; his football podcast New Heights, which he co-hosts with his brother, had become popular enough to support him and his young family—which saw the addition of a third daughter weeks after last year’s Super Bowl, rendering the idea of another season even more foolhardy. Plus, there was the small matter of what actually went down during the 2022 Super Bowl. The most Philadelphian thing happened: We lost.

I’m not being dramatic when I say the reality of being a Philly fan is that it’s often painful. Perhaps nothing evidenced this more than the 2022 season, in which most of Philadelphia’s major sports teams—the Phillies (MLB), the Union (MLS), and the Eagles—made it all the way to their respective championships only to lose. Capturing that reality is what places Kelce leagues ahead of other Philly sports movies, which tend to follow the same typical, satisfying beats, wherein the loyal underdog wins in the end. Kelce feels like the first Philly sports movie to show the entire journey—from the doubts to the breathtaking possibility of proving the doubters wrong—only to come to a painful end with a questionable call in the final moments of a heated, great championship game.

Kelce doesn’t end there, though. The question of Kelce’s possible retirement still hasn’t been answered. “Every logical thing is telling me I should stop playing football,” he states. He has torn his body apart and has to be absent for large periods of time from his children, who he can’t chase after or play with the way most normal parents can at the age of 35. But, like most Philadelphians, Kelce has never counted himself out. Having made it to the premier stage and come up short, he wants to return and fight.

So much of football, he explains in the documentary, is fighting—fighting to win a rep in the gym, fighting for a play on the field, “fighting for your worth,” which is really hard to do, but which “keeps you alive.” Here is the true Philadelphian motto: We’re not always the City of Brotherly Love, but we are always the city that fights for our worth, battling every day to stay alive. “I have no doubt I can be a loving father, I have no doubt I can be successful,” Kelce continues, tearing up, “but where am I gonna get that? Where am I gonna be the best in the world at what I fucking do—and not because of anything other than I go out there and earned it?” He decides to give it at least one more go, likely for good this time. Kelce ends the way any true Philly sports movie would—not with a win, but with a loss and a promise to fight back even harder.