Sometimes the crime isn’t the story. Sometimes it’s the cover-up.
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Marcus Hayes put out a report that the NFL is “furious” with the Philadelphia Eagles over the team’s messaging — or lack thereof — regarding the handling of a serious medical situation with star quarterback Jalen Hurts, in which blood clots were discovered in Hurts’ lungs and ended his season after just 5 games.
To be clear, the NFL isn’t saying it’s mad about what the Eagles may or may not have done to put Hurts’ life in danger — just how they went about covering it up.
So far, the only person on the Eagles who has publicly addressed the situation with Hurts is head coach Nick Sirianni, who, for all intents and purposes, is removed from most medical decisions for his players and defers to the medical staff.
The people with the real answers on what happened — specifically Eagles general manager Howie Roseman and doctors who have treated Hurts — have not spoken.
The Eagles, losers of four straight games, play the Dallas Cowboys at home tonight on Monday Night Football.
Eagles, NFL, NFLPA All Under Microscope
Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio laid out the long-term repercussions if any cover-up by the Eagles, the NFL, and the NFL Players Association comes to light.
“Through it all, the team has hidden behind ‘patient privacy’ — even after the statements shared specific details about the ‘superficial’ blood clot that became a deep vein thrombosis and multiple blood clots in his lungs,” Florio wrote on Monday. “The medical privacy rights of Jalen Hurts have already been compromised, if not expressly waived. Specific questions about how the initial condition arose, when it was diagnosed, how it was treated, and whether the complications flowed from those decisions are irrelevant at this point to the issue of privacy. The union can’t afford the perception of complicity in a possible coverup. Any investigation, in whatever form it takes, must seek real answers to hard questions and provide them to the public … last week, the Eagles failed to satisfy the widespread interest in Hurts’s case. Moving forward, any effort to investigate what happened must include a commitment to true and complete transparency.”
Timeline Still Unclear Over Hurts’ Issues
The Eagles may have tried to cut off questions before they even started, with a lengthy statement that tried to lay out the whole situation with Hurts — it didn’t work.
The NFL and the NFLPA issued a joint statement on Sunday about where things stood moving forward after the NFL seemed to dismiss the issue to begin with and the NFLPA followed up by asking for an investigation.
“Joint statement from the NFL and the NFLPA regarding the investigation into the events surrounding Jalen Hurts’ blood clots: ‘The NFL and NFL Players Association are working together to review the matter,'” ESPN’s Adam Schefter wrote on his official X account on October 25.
NFL ‘Furious’ With Eagles Over Handling of QB Jalen Hurts: Report