Jason Kelce’s first assignment as an NFL game analyst featured the kind of fumble no player wants to make on live television.
The former Philadelphia Eagles center had already become a familiar face on ESPN’s Monday Night Football studio coverage, but Sunday marked his first time calling a live game. Broadcasting from London, Kelce covered the Indianapolis Colts’ victory over the Washington Commanders—and briefly referred to the team by its former name.
“The Redskins right now are doing a great job of not only staying tight but making the play when the ball is in the receiver’s hand and keeping it short of the sticks,” the 38-year-old media personality told play-by-play announcer Dave Pasch on NFL Network.
Pasch immediately began laughing, though Kelce’s slip was hardly inexplicable. The former name had been used by the franchise for 87 years, beginning with its 1933 origins in Boston, and remained in place for nearly all of Kelce’s 13-season NFL career. The term is widely regarded as a derogatory racial slur.
“Commanders,” Pasch corrected him. “You did it.”
“What’d I do?” Kelce replied, apparently unaware of the mistake.
Jason Kelce speaks with Colts head coach Shane Steichen before Sunday’s game in London
Pasch explained what had happened, prompting Kelce to recognize that he had fallen into the very trap the broadcast team had been discussing.
“Oh, my gosh!” Kelce said. “I almost made it out… Well, sorry, Washington.”
Pasch later revealed that he, Kelce and fellow analyst Kurt Warner had made a friendly wager over which of them would be the first to use the former team name during the London broadcast.
Rather than drawing widespread backlash online, Kelce’s on-air mistake was embraced by some conservative commentators.
“Jason Kelce confirmed Redskins truther,” conservative sports and culture outlet OutKick wrote in a post on X.
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Other users thanked Kelce for saying what they viewed as the team’s “real” name, underscoring how contentious the franchise’s former identity remains.
The team retired the name in 2020 after years of controversy. Then-owner Dan Snyder had long defended the nickname, but changed course as the United States confronted a broader racial reckoning following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
The history of the term itself remains disputed. A 2016 report by The Washington Post said it had been used as a racial slur as far back as 1863 in Minnesota.
One period announcement in the Winona Daily Republican stated: “The State reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory.” The passage added that the payment exceeded the value assigned to the bodies of Native Americans east of the Red River.
Many supporters wanted Washington to retain its former name, while critics cited racist imagery and the term’s history in calling for change. The franchise ultimately retired “Redskins” in 2020
Members of the American Indian Movement of Colorado and Idle No More protest as a bus carrying Washington football team members arrives at Denver’s Mile High Stadium in 2013
By 1898, Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defined “redskin” as a term that was “often contemptuous.”
Still, a 2016 Washington Post poll reported that 90 percent of 504 Native American respondents said they were “not bothered” by the team’s name. Snyder later cited those findings in an open letter defending his decision to retain the nickname.
However, that survey and other similar studies have been slammed by journalists and social scientists as being unreliable.
‘The reporters and editors behind this story must have known that it would be used as justification for the continued use of these harmful, racist mascots,’ read a statement from the Native American Journalists Association. ‘They were either willfully malicious or dangerously naïve in the process and reporting used in this story, and neither is acceptable from any journalistic institution.’
In March of 2020, UC Berkeley revealed a study that found that more than half of its 1,000 Native American respondents were offended by the team name. What’s more, the National Congress of American Indians as well as the National Indian Education Association have called for an end to the use of indigenous team mascots.