Taylor Swift greeted Jason Kelce with a hug as the Kansas City Chiefs took on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Swift, 34, embraced her boyfriend’s brother, 37, in a private suite overlooking the field at Arrowhead Stadium on Monday, November 4, according to fan footage shared online. Swift brought her mom Andrea, dad Scott and brother Austin with her to watch Travis Kelce and the Chiefs defeat the Buccaneers 30-24.
Jason, meanwhile, was in the middle of a controversy regarding how he handled a heckler over the weekend.
The retired NFL player made headlines on Saturday, November 2, when he hurled the heckler’s smartphone after the person made an offensive remark about Travis and his famous girlfriend. In a viral clip, that person confronted Jason and asked, “How does it feel that your brother is a f— for dating Taylor Swift?”
Jason, who was outside Penn State University’s Beaver Stadium for an appearance on ESPN’s College GameDay, retaliated by grabbing the guy’s phone and throwing it down on the ground.
Footage later surfaced of Jason verbally responding to the altercation by saying, “Who’s the f— now?” three times.
Philadelphia radio host Jon Marks condemned Jason’s behavior via X on Saturday, writing, “Kelce has to realize that his profile is bigger than it ever was as a player.”
The PHLY Sports host opined: “He’s making big $$$ across multile [sic] platforms and his brother might marry the biggest pop star ever. He can’t be spiking people’s phones. He needs security to deal with this s—.”
Though Jason received some backlash for escalating the situation, many fans supported him for defending Travis and Swift, both of whom have not publicly commented on the incident.
Us Weekly confirmed on Monday that Penn State University Police are looking into the altercation further. “University Police and Public Safety is the investigating agency for this incident and the process is ongoing,” PSU Police told Us in a statement.
Later that day, Jason broke his silence and apologized for his misconduct.
“I’m not happy with anything that took place. I’m not proud of it,” he said on ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown ahead of the Chiefs-Buccaneers showdown. “Within a heated moment, I chose to greet hate with hate and I don’t think that’s a productive thing. I don’t think it leads to discourse.”
He continued, “In that moment I fell down to a level that I shouldn’t have. Bottom line is, I try to live my life by the golden rules. That’s what I’ve always been taught. I try to treat people with decency and respect. I’m going to keep doing that moving forward.”
Kelce concluded by saying, “We got a game to focus on. A matchup. I don’t think this is the platform to necessarily go into more detail.”
