The NFL would have has no problem with how the Eagles handled the health of quarterback Jalen Hurts in London. On the other hand, the league is not happy with how the team handled the controversy that followed.
Marcus Hayes of Philadelphia Investigatorciting a “longtime anonymous source well connected to the NFL offices,” reports that the powers that be are “furious» with the team for their messages regarding the situation.
To date, only coach Nick Sirianni has been made available to answer the obvious questions raised by two statements released by the team. Sirianni didn’t have much to say, whether (or not) he knew more about the subject than he was sharing.
General manager Howie Roseman, who runs overall football operations, did not address the issue. The doctors who evaluated Hurts were not made available.
Through it all, the team hid behind “patient privacy” – even after the statements shared specific details about the “superficial” blood clot that developed into deep vein thrombosis and multiple blood clots in his lungs. Jalen Hurts’ medical privacy rights 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 complications arose from those decisions are not relevant at this point to the privacy issue.
Of course, the NFL didn’t help the situation via dismissive comments made by several executives last week, including Chief Medical Officer Allen Sills. His insistence that Hurts was receiving “very conservative” care does not on the surface match the decision to let him fly to London, play in London and return home from London.
On Sunday, the NFL and the NFL Players Association jointly announced that they were “work together” on the Hurts case. It’s unclear exactly what that means, especially since the NFLPA has yet to formally invoke its unilateral right to demand an investigation under Article 39, Section 5(f) of the collective bargaining agreement.
The union cannot afford to give the impression of complicity in a possible cover-up. Any investigation, whatever its form, must seek real answers to difficult questions and provide them to the public.
It is impossible for the NFL, on the one hand, to attract public attention, engagement and stadium funding while, on the other hand, saying “it’s none of your business” when the public is naturally curious about what happens to NFL players. Last week, the Eagles failed to satisfy the widespread interest in Hurts’ case. Going forward, any efforts to investigate what happened must include a commitment to true and complete transparency.
Despite everything, the Eagles play a home game tonight against the Cowboys. It will be interesting to see if and to what extent ESPN’s wall-to-wall coverage of the game advances Hurts’ lingering story.
Gn headline
