PHILADELPHIA, P.A. — The Jalen Hurts blood clot drama isn’t going away anytime soon. The quarterback is doing well and is expected to make a full recovery, and that’s great news, but there need to be more answers than the ones head coach Nick Sirianni didn’t provide on Monday.
To be fair, the head coach shouldn’t be the one answering the whys and hows of a saga that has become a national news story, with a lengthy segment airing on Monday night’s "ABC World News Tonight."
The lingering questions should be answered by those above Sirianni's pay grade, which in this case are general manager Howie Roseman and maybe even owner Jeffrey Lurie. It is Roseman, however, who oversees virtually everything in the organization, and that includes all things medical, strength and training, and sports science.
Mistakes were made
Roseman should have been front and center on Monday, along with, perhaps, a member of the medical team or training staff. It’s not too late to make the GM available to help answer some of the lingering questions about why Hurts was allowed to play in the game against the Jaguars and why he was allowed to take an eight-hour transatlantic flight back just hours after the game.
It would clear things up, and in these matters, transparency helps, if only to eliminate any whiff of mistrust that could be harbored by the fan base and, more importantly, by the players inside the locker room.
There are privacy issues to navigate, and Hurts is a very private person, so the answers may not be forthcoming, and maybe that is a directive from him and his representatives. There’s a chance that Roseman wants to engage on the issue but simply can’t for those reasons.
Still, it’s not a very good look to just run Sirianni out there to face the fire. All the coach did when pressed repeatedly during his day-after-game Zoom call was say that he isn’t a medical professional, that he leans on the medical experts and has full trust and full faith in them.
Sirianni's job is to coach football, and right now, with the Eagles mired in a four-game losing streak, that is where his attention needs to be, not answering questions about decisions he had little to no hand in making.
More transparency still needed in the Jalen Hurts situation
The Eagles have worked closely with Hurts’ agent Nicole Lynn, whose name was attached to the statement released on Monday, but team officials likely helped craft the message.
The statement did not go far enough. More is needed.
When Andy Reid was the head coach, he would make head trainer Rick Burkholder available whenever necessary, for injuries big, small, and confusing, like the Mike Patterson health scare on Aug. 3, 2011.
It was during a training camp practice that day when the defensive tackle collapsed and had a three-minute seizure. Burkholder and his staff were the first on the scene, and it wasn’t long before he was answering questions from the media.
Patterson had surgery a few months later to remove a tangle of blood vessels near his brain that caused the episode, and he made a full recovery to continue playing.
The Eagles have moved away from making a member of their training staff available since Reid left. Roseman believes the team benefits from letting only one person be the voice of the organization during the season. And that's OK—except for when something like Hurts happens.
This was scary stuff, no less scary than the day Patterson collapsed. In crises like these, transparency helps to alleviate some of that fear.
It’s not fair to Sirianni or the Eagles in the locker room to let unanswered questions fester, especially with 11 more games to play. Distractions like this won’t make anyone forget about Hurts or whether the Hurts episode was handled properly.
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