Published October 20, 2026 01:08 PM
The absence of complete information about the events that led to Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts traveling to London with a blood clot in his leg, playing with a blood clot in his leg, and promptly traveling back to Philadelphia with a blood clot in his leg has resulted in plenty of reports aimed at filling the gaps. The craziest of the reports emerged on Monday, when both Tom Pelissero of Netflix and Ian Rapoport of ESPNFL reported that doctors had advised Hurts to not sleep as a precaution.
That led to the claim from Pelissero that Hurts went without sleep for roughly 36 hours.
A few hours later, Pelissero (who was criticized for his framing of Hurts’s willingness to play on no sleep) wheeled a mop and bucket to Twitter and said this: “Just spoke to Jalen Hurts’ agent, Nicole Lynn, who clarified that while Hurts was up until early Sunday morning getting evaluated at a hospital, he was able to sleep upon rejoining the team and the Eagles set aside a room for him at the stadium. Videos from the stadium show Hurts coming onto the field just before kickoff and he felt rested enough to play.”
The ESPN article was revised to include this paragraph: “Sources told Rapoport that Hurts was in the hospital late night in London and upon returning to the hotel at 3:00am local time, he was able to sleep until the team left for the stadium at 10:30am. Upon arrival, Hurts napped until heading out to the field for pregame warmups.”
So, in the course of the same day, the reporting went from doctors telling Hurts not to sleep at all to Hurts eventually sleeping up to 7.5 hours at the hotel AND napping at the stadium.
None of it makes sense, largely because the Eagles have yet to make anyone available to answer the questions that the media and the public have. Although Monday’s statement from the team mentioned “transparency,” the level of transparency has been selective and incomplete. Only coach Nick Sirianni has spoken to reporters, and his role was necessarily limited.
If Hurts has no qualms about the issuance of statements detailing his health situation, he surely wouldn’t object to the doctor(s) who treated him talking about what happened, when it happened, how it happened, why it happened.
But it appears that both the Eagles and the NFL hope to run out the clock until the next bright, shiny object captures the attention of our collective goldfish brain.
Eventually, someone will have the whole story. It would be better if it came directly from the people who were involved in a chain of decisions that seems odd at best, unsafe at worst.
Still, that’s how it goes for the NFL and its teams. They want attention from the public on their terms. And they will try their damnedest to keep uncomfortable truths hidden from outside scrutiny for as long as they can.
As to the reporters who apparently have retracted the reports that Hurts was advised to not sleep without officially retracting them, there’s a story to be told about why and how that happened. The most sensible explanation is that they were cajoled by someone from the Eagles into doing so, and that they realized (or were reminded) that the Eagles are one of the teams that butter their bread when it comes to reporting transactions five minutes before the moves are announced.