Jason Kelce lost a bet to Zach Ertz and Now his Hair is Blonde

The Eagles center explained why he joined Ertz has the two bleached blondes on the team

PHILADELPHIA – It was a bet Jason Kelce was happy to lose.

Sort of.

Prior to OTAs, he bet Zach Ertz that the tight end would be traded before Week 1 of the season.

Ertz is still with the Eagles, his ninth season with them.

So, Kelce had to dye his hair blonde.

“It’s a bet I’m happy to lose,” said Kelce on Thursday. “Not happy with hair, but happy that I lost the bet.

“I was betting that he was going to get traded because I firmly thought he was going to get traded.”

So did the entire Philadelphia region and perhaps the rest of the football world, too, thought the same thing.

Ertz, though, looks like he will have a pivotal role in rookie head coach Nick Sirianni’s offense. He had two catches for 34 yards in the season-opening win over the Atlanta Falcons and needs just 27 more receptions to become the organization’s all-time receptions leaders, ahead of Hall of Famer Harold Carmichael’s total of 589 set nearly 40 years ago.

Kelce didn't want to elaborate on what Ertz would have had to do if he had indeed been traded, but because he lost, he now is a bleached blonde.

Actually, Kelce now sports a bit of a three-tone look, with blonde hair and a brownish, blackish beard with black eyebrows.

“(My wife) knew it was coming,” said Kelce. “My daughter didn’t have any reaction. I videotaped it expecting a reaction and she didn’t notice a difference, so I don’t know if that’s good or bad. My wife’s definitely not a fan.”

Kelce isn’t, either.

He said he would either shave it off or wait until it grows out then get a haircut. The center also added that if the Eagles keep winning games he might have to keep it blonde.

The bet between the two was made back in April when Ertz had already dyed his hair blonde.

“I think he might’ve known at that point which is why I’m sitting here with this hair,” said Kelce. “A little bit of inside information. We were here a few weeks before training camp working out at the facilities. 

"He had just started working out at the facilities. Probably should have been another sign to me that he might be coming back. Really happy that Zach’s still here, though.”

Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Eagle Maven and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglemaven.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.


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Ed Kracz
ED KRACZ

Ed Kracz has been covering the Eagles full-time for over a decade and has written about Philadelphia sports since 1996. He wrote about the Phillies in the 2008 and 2009 World Series, the Flyers in their 2010 Stanely Cup playoff run to the finals, and was in Minnesota when the Eagles secured their first-ever Super Bowl win in 2017. Ed has received multiple writing awards as a sports journalist, including several top-five finishes in the Associated Press Sports Editors awards.