NFL, Eagles Defend Handling of Jalen Hurts’s Blood Clots

NEW YORK — The NFL believes the Eagles followed proper medical procedures in the Jalen Hurts case, sources and league officials said Tuesday.

Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, strongly defended the Eagles’ actions at the owners meeting in New York on Tuesday.

“The notion that there are external factors or that any of our physicians would put a player in harm’s way, that’s nonsense,” Sills said.

The Eagles were sharply questioned and criticized by some observers for allowing Hurts to play in a game in London—reportedly with his sleep schedule affected by his medical treatment—after being diagnosed with a blood clot in his leg, and then travel back to the U.S. afterward.

And the NFL Players Association wants the team and league’s handling of Hurts to be investigated.

“The NFLPA is not aware of any NFL investigation into the medical care provided to Jalen Hurts,” the union said in a statement Tuesday night. “In fact, the league previously informed the union that it did not plan to review the care he received. Before conclusions are drawn about how this situation was handled, there must be a full investigation into what occurred. Determining the facts is essential to ensuring players receive the highest level of care and protection going forward.”

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday that the league welcomes the union’s call for an investigation.

“We welcome that,” Goodell said. “That’s part of our processes. That’s fine. Our chief medical officer has been through the protocols that were followed. So we welcome that. If that’s what they do, they have that right.”

Sills arranges for a qualified medical provider to be available in each market in which the league plays games. In London, that meant that Hurts was examined and tested at the Cleveland Clinic.

The union is involved with making arrangements for players to be treated by qualified medical providers, a source said.

“We’re really getting into patient privacy that we should respect in this case,” Sills said at a news conference Tuesday evening at the owners meeting. “Again, I respect the patient, who happens to be a prominent player, and also the providers. I just go back to saying I think there was incredible vigilance. There was conservative care, state-of-the-art imaging that was done in London.

“And as far as the timing and the decision-making, I’ll just reference back … that I have great confidence in that and believe that everyone acted with an abundance of caution and with a tremendous what we call high degree of suspicion to try to identify and take care of these things as quickly as possible and most importantly … acted at every moment with the patient’s best interests at heart, regardless of their identity. That’s really the most important thing.”

The NFL has a medical subcommittee that tracks blood-clotting issues in players, according to Sills.

“There was considerable and uninformed speculation [Monday] in the reporting,” said Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president of communications, public affairs and policy. “I understand that all the facts are now publicly available [and] have been reported widely regarding the conservative steps that were taken to ensure Jalen Hurts’s health was always made the first priority and continues to be.”

Hurts is expected to be sidelined through at least the remainder of the season after being diagnosed with blood clots in his lungs and placed on blood thinners as a treatment.

Hurts has been diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis and bilateral pulmonary emboli, according to a statement released Monday by his agent, Nicole Lynn, and the Eagles.

He is “clinically stable and has no significant functional limitations,” Lynn and the team said in their statement, and his treatment “should only involve anticoagulation.”

Hurts will not be permitted to play football while being treated with blood thinners, they said.

“Jalen’s prognosis is very good, and we expect a full recovery,” Lynn and the Eagles said in their statement Monday. “We anticipate that he will have the opportunity to resume contact football activities when off the blood thinners. In the meantime, he will remain active around the team and continue to condition. More importantly, we anticipate that he will have no long-term effects.

“We are thinking of Jalen and looking forward to a strong recovery.”

The Eagles placed Hurts on the injured reserve list Saturday. He did not play in the team’s loss Sunday to the Panthers in Philadelphia. Hurts did play the previous Sunday during a defeat to the Jaguars in London.

During a news conference Monday afternoon, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni defended the team’s approach. Sirianni—appearing in front of reporters alone—faced pointed questions both about Hurts playing and flying with the clot, and an initial report that doctors advised Hurts to not sleep before the London game.

“The health of our players is always at the forefront of our mind,” Sirianni said Monday. “And we’ll leave that up to the medical experts. But, you know, we always, always care deeply about our players. … When you are completely focused on together and connection, you’re always thinking about the well-being of your guys. And that’s where we were in that situation.”

Lynn and the Eagles said in Monday’s statement that Hurts “was initially diagnosed by specialists in London with a left calf superficial vein thrombosis.” His current diagnosis came after “further testing and monitoring,” they said.

There were conflicting reports about how much Hurts slept the night before playing in the game in London.

Two sources told FOS on Tuesday that all Eagles players were given recommendations about sleep during the travel to London as part of the time-change acclimation process.

One of those sources told FOS that the Eagles arrived in London around 10 a.m. local time on the Saturday before the game after leaving the U.S. around 11 p.m. ET the previous night.

Players were told to sleep as much as possible on the plane during the fight to London, according to that source. The Eagles checked into their hotel in London and had a light workout and afternoon walk-through practice that Saturday. According to the source, players were told as a “suggestion” to hold off from sleeping until after Saturday’s team meeting at 8 p.m. local time so they would be able to sleep through the night. The team buses to the stadium for the game departed Sunday around 10:30 a.m. London time.

Hurts reportedly did not sleep overnight while at the hospital in London but slept after rejoining the Eagles before the game.

“I have tremendous confidence in the Philadelphia Eagles’ medical staff and all of our medical staffs, meaning that our teams secure the rights and the services of the best of the best physicians in their markets,” Sills said Tuesday. “And they employ an army of consultants as well to help them in all the medical decision-making. And so the league itself, it’s not our job to go in and tell them how to practice medicine. It’s our job to support them and to administer the jointly bargained protocols that we do have.”