Jason Kelce apologizes for viral phone smash

On Saturday, former NFL safety and current ESPN analyst Jason Kelce gave a troll more than said troll bargained for, grabbing his phone and smashing it after the troll did what trolls often do. The video went viral.

Overwhelmingly, Kelce's actions were defended and supported. We saw no criticism of Kelce, from anyone.

Kelce nevertheless opted to publicly apologize for the incident in the opening moments of Monday Night Countdown in advance of the Buccaneers-Chiefs game.

"I think everybody's seen on social media everything that took place this week," Kelce said, via AwfulAnnouncing.com. "Listen, I'm not — I'm not happy with anything that took place. I'm not proud of it and, you know, in a heated moment, I chose to greet hate with hate, and I just don't think that that's a productive thing. I really don't.

"I don't think that, you know, it leads to discourse and it's — and it's the right way to go about things. And in that moment, I fell down to a level that I shouldn't have. So I think the bottom line is: I want to live my life — I try to live my life by the golden rule. That's what I've always been taught. I try to treat people with common decency and respect, and I'm going to keep doing that moving forward even though this past — even though I fell short this week, I'm going to do that moving forward and continue to do that.

"So, yeah, I think we got a game to focus on. Obviously, the matchup, I don't think this is the platform to necessarily go into more detail, so. So, let's get ready for this Chiefs game."

There's undoubtedly an interesting story to be told regarding how the apology came to be, why it happened where it happened, and who crafted and vetted what he said.

Again, no one was calling for an apology. Many who tuned into for Monday Night Countdown might not have even known about it. For those, the apology would have created confusion.

It was still an impressive gesture. We need more redemption, forgiveness, and reconciliation. We'll definitely need more of those things tomorrow, or whenever one of the most divisive elections in the history of the nation is finally resolved.