The NFL does not believe there was any wrongdoing in the Philadelphia Eagles allowing Jalen Hurts to play in the team’s Week 5 London game, according to a report from The Athletic’s Jonathan Jones (not to be confused with the Eagles cornerback with the same name).
The NFL has concluded that the process surrounding Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts being cleared to play in Week 5 with a superficial blood clot “was handled appropriately,” a league source tells The Athletic. The source, speaking
to The Athletic on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, says the NFL will not issue any punishment to the Eagles for its handling of the medical process, or for Hurts not being given an injury designation ahead of the game.
Questions have been raised about the Eagles’ handling of this situation in the aftermath of Hurts being ruled out for the rest of the 2026 season due his condition worsening. Not to mention initial reports about Hurts playing against the Jacksonville Jaguars without sleeping for as many as 36 hours prior to the game, which have since been changed, as noted by Pro Football Talk.
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.
For what it’s worth, NFL insider Tom Pelissero — who originally reported on Hurts’ lack of sleep before later walking that claim back — talked through a timeline of the Hurts situation during a recent appearance on The Ringer NFL Show:
Transcript:
“I think this is also a kind of microcosm of the general society, the media — that we’re a part of. I certainly played a role in it today. But anytime you have something unusual that happened, most people — from what I can tell — at least on social media, immediately search for who to blame. ‘It’s gotta be the Eagles! It’s gotta be their fault! How could they? How could they put him on the field?‘ Earlier in the week, it was ‘Jalen Hurts, maybe he doesn’t want to play.‘
Let me just take you inside this because this is a situation where everybody that I have spoken to, all parties are really on the same page here. Yes, it trickled out oddly going back to last weekend where you got one report that he’s not on IR, and then a few hours later he is going on IR. Before that, playing in the game, and then [Thursday] it’s announced that he’s out. And then we learn today that the blood clots have spread from what was initially in his calf, into his lungs, which can be a really scary and serious deal. So, the Eagles from the start have focused more on Jalen Hurts the person and his health than they have the player.
So, let me just give you the timeline on what actually happened once they get to London.
Remember, they fly over on Friday. Like most teams, the advice was ‘Hey, once you get to London, stay [awake]. Stay up all day, it’s the best way to beat the jet lag.‘ And so guys, all of us who have traveled to Europe, you know you don’t totally have your sea legs underneath you but the worse thing you can do is go and take a nap immediately because then you’re going to be out of whack the rest of the time. So all the players are going to bed, they did this kind of last minute. All the players are going to bed around 9 or 10 o’clock on Saturday night before the Sunday kickoff, which I think is 3:30 London time.
It’s right about then that this calf issue, which stems from Jalen Hurts getting cleated a week prior, and then on Friday he was on the injury report but he was listed as a full participant. It’s that Saturday night that they start to realize there might be something more here. So, he ends up going to a clinic that is not exactly close by. Goes and gets an ultrasound, gets these various tests. He’s there until 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning. By the time he gets back to the hotel, they come to the conclusion that it’s a superficial blood clot. A superficial blood cot — and I’m not going to play doctor on any of this — but I asked doctors how you best explain it and it’s like if you ever see a bruise, like a deep bruise that just doesn’t go away and it’s kinda sitting there, it’s like that, except it’s in the vein. But it’s not something that would preclude you from going out, running around, getting hit, playing a football game.
So, Jalen Hurts finally gets back to the hotel. Everybody is, again, on the same page, in the loop. Hurts did sleep. This is where there was a miscommunication among a variety of people and I take seriously my responsibility in relaying accurate information. Again, there were some things that were not communicated, um, as would’ve been ideal in this situation. He DID get some sleep. Once he got back to the hotel. Now, this is like in mid-morning, all of his teammates are getting up and they’re going through their day, he’s sleeping then. They then get him on the bus, they go over to the stadium next, they set aside a room, so he got another hour of sleep actually at the stadium.
Which, now, if you walk that back, all those videos that came out from fans in the stands of, like, Jalen Hurts running onto the field … I don’t know if it was after the national anthem or right before — like, last minute, he’s coming out there. It’s because he was going through this whole process to get himself ready. But it was NOT — and I will reiterate this — it was NOT because they told him ‘don’t sleep.‘ There are things you want to do, motion-wise, for the blood clot. But it was not because they were scared it would turn into something more. It was just the logistics of the situation.
So, he plays in that game, he played pretty well, they lose the game in absolute crazy fashion in the final seconds. But he threw for over 200 yards and a touchdown. You would not have known, I don’t think, other than he didn’t run a whole lot, that he was dealing with something.
They get back [to Philadelphia], Wednesday he practices in full again, but he had a follow-up ultrasound scheduled and it was there that they realized the clot is moving. That’s when the announcement comes that he’s not going to play this week. He goes and gets additional scans. Saturday, they get back the information from another doctor in Boston … and this is after the initial report that was out there that he was not going on IR. Which, it was true at that time they hadn’t discussed IR because they didn’t have all the information, they were waiting for it. They get it back, he’s got what I was told is several blood clots that have moved up and are now in his lungs. That’s a very serious deal, because it had actually gotten into the body. At that point, it was OK, we’re shutting him down, he’s going to have to go on blood thinners. They consulted a bunch of different medical experts.
But that’s how the entire thing played out. […] I had a number of different people, whether it was other NFL front office people, whether it was, more importantly, doctors and athletic trainers — who reached out to me and asked some follow-up questions about the reporting that was out there — including from myself — and every single one … OK, these are people who do currently work in the NFL or have preeviously worked in the NFL. And everyone said, based on the information that the Eagles had, that we know they had, about this being diagnosed as a superficial blood clot, all those people would’ve cleared Jalen Hurts to play in the game.
This was not the Eagles putting a football game ahead of his health. This was not like they were on an island here and how in the world could they. Again, you can Monday morning quarterback this thing all you want. But everyone I talked to said, if it is what it was initially diagnosed as, that is a safe thing to be able to play a football game with.
Jalen Hurts, who you know is almost never on the injury report, he doesn’t miss games, he always plays, Sheil, you know it has to be — for lack of a better term — a life or death situation for him to shut it down. And that’s why only when we got to Wednesday and the clot is moving, the additional tests, and then on Saturday when it was in his lungs, only then, and I think Jalen Hurts — from a football standpoint, a competitive standpoint — acknowledged that we have to take our time here. He’s going on the medication. You can’t play contact sports while you’re on blood thinners. And so in all likelihood we’ve seen the last of Jalen Hurts for 2026.
But this is not Eagles versus Jalen Hurts, it’s not Eagles vs. Jalen Hurts’ agent. Everybody through this entire process were working together. And you saw that even with the joint statement today that, at this point, they’re on the same page.
