JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Quarterback Jalen Hurts has taken the Philadelphia Eagles to two Super Bowls, and now his playing future is in doubt. Let's walk through what we know. Hurts took a cleat to the calf in a game back on October 4, and days later, after the team flew to London to take on Jacksonville, an ultrasound revealed a blood clot in his leg close to the skin. The Eagles cleared him to play, and he did. Four days later, the team and his agent shared Hurts has been diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis and blood clots in his lungs. The NFL Players Association has called for an investigation into his treatment. Lindsay Jones covers the NFL for The Ringer and is on the line. Hi there.
LINDSAY JONES: Hi. Thanks for having me.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. I mean, Lindsay, there are just so many unanswered questions here. I want to start with two big ones. What do we know about how Jalen Hurts is doing now? And what do we know about what his future might look like?
JONES: Yeah, so right now, the prognosis sounds very good. It's a little unclear if he's been around the team since he's been placed on IR. They are playing on Monday night, and so they just started practicing today. Nick Sirianni, the head coach of the Eagles, was a little cagey about whether Jalen is actually around the team right now.
SUMMERS: OK.
JONES: But ultimately, the long-term prognosis here is good. He's going to be on blood thinners for about three months. That's pretty - that's the standard treatment for the pulmonary emboli and the deep vein thrombosis. And what the team and kind of the people around Hurts are saying right now is that they know why he got this blood clot. It was from that injury, from getting...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
JONES: ...Cleated in the calf. It kind of - it wasn't like a spontaneous, you know, kind of mystery about where this came from. So they believe that once he gets through this course of treatment that eventually he'll be able to get back to football. That just won't happen...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
JONES: ...This season.
SUMMERS: I mean, I have to say, like, I follow football super closely. I'm constantly checking my fantasy stats. But even people in my life who do not care about the NFL are talking and texting...
JONES: Yes.
SUMMERS: ...About this. There's just a lot of speculation out there that the Eagles put the team and the league over Jalen Hurts, the person, and that they played Hurts when they probably shouldn't have. What's your take on all of that?
JONES: Yeah, I mean, that was ultimately the first question that I had as well, not just when we had the first indication that, oh, there - you know, there was the superficial blood clot. But then when you kind of found out all of the further details about the ultrasound and then being cleared to play, and there was some unclear reporting about whether he was allowed to sleep or told not to sleep. Ultimately, I believe he did sleep, but he was at the clinic in London until, kind of, you know, the very wee hours of the morning...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
JONES: ...The day before they played. So there were a lot of questions about, you know, who's kind of looking out for Jalen. And I do think he had a role in kind of, you know, pushing to play.
SUMMERS: Right.
JONES: He wanted to play. He wants to be tough. He wants to be there for his teammates. But ultimately, I think there's a question of, at what point does the team, the league, an independent doctor, people around...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
JONES: ...Jalen Hurts step in and say, hey, the risk might be small, but there is too much of a risk to play? And I think that's the thing that we don't ultimately know the answer to at this point.
SUMMERS: I - you - yeah, I do want to get into what we've been hearing from the NFL. Dr. Allen Sills, who's the league's chief medical officer, said yesterday that he's got total confidence in how the Eagles handled all of this. I want to play a quick snippet of that press conference.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
ALLEN SILLS: The notion that there are external factors or that any of our physicians would put a player in harm's way, that's nonsense.
SUMMERS: Pretty strong statement there...
JONES: Yeah.
SUMMERS: ...But one thing that came up for me is, like, if the interests of the team and the league are at odds with the interest of the player and the player's health, who's in the room that has the player's back?
JONES: Yeah, usually, that would be - you know, it would be the player or the player's agent. And at this point, we don't - there - it doesn't seem like there was somebody who was kind of independently, you know, saying this is what's...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
JONES: ...Going to be best for Jalen. Right now, one of the interesting parts, just when you think about team-player-union dynamics, is that the team and Jalen Hurts and his immediate people around him seem to be very, very aligned. And usually, if there was kind of friction, you would see that split happening.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
JONES: Not to say that that's not going to happen, but right now, they have been very much aligned. What's interesting now is that the union, the NFL Players Association, they're now calling for an investigation. We'll see exactly what...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
JONES: ...That looks like, and if they can conduct that on their own because the NFL, for their part, they believe that they've already, you know, done their own...
SUMMERS: Right.
JONES: ...Due diligence and said that they're not looking into it anymore.
SUMMERS: And I'll note that league commissioner Roger Goodell has said he welcomes that investigation. One last quick question. This story's broken through in a way that few health stories do. Do you remember anything like this ever happening before? We've got about 30 seconds left.
JONES: Yeah, I mean, I think, there - you know, there have been cases where, you know, you have to question if there was some sort of medical malpractice. There was a Chargers quarterback a couple years ago who...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
JONES: ...Was getting a shot and had his lung punctured.
SUMMERS: OK.
JONES: And so - you know, and that just immediately becomes, this is a really...
SUMMERS: Exactly.
JONES: ...Scary (ph) situation. So it happens...
SUMMERS: It does.
JONES: ...But very rarely.
SUMMERS: Lindsay Jones of The Ringer, thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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