Or, how a blood clot exposed just how useless the National Football League Players Association is.
Unless you’ve been on Mars or something, you not only know that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is most likely out for the season, but you also know why.
On Monday, a joint statement issued by the team and Hurts’s agent Nicole Lynn let everyone know that because the superficial blood clot caused by a cleat to the calf in the Eagles loss to the Los Angeles Rams has become a deep vein thrombosis that has moved to his lungs, Eagles fans are going to have to count on backup QB Tanner McKee to get them to the promised land.
(Good luck with that.)
To say that everyone has lost their minds regarding Hurts injury would be an understatement. With every piece of information about the care he received from team doctors, and how the team itself has handled things, reactions from Eagles fans have ranged from “He needs to sue all of you and demand a trade!” to “Fire Everybody!” to “Yay! We can finally get rid of him and maybe join the Arch Manning sweepstakes!”
(The obsession on the part of some sports reporters — I’m looking at you Marcus Hayes of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Spike Eskin of WIP — to replace someone who has done nothing but win since he got here with Insert Mediocre White Quarterback Here should be studied. By psychologists. In depth.)
But I don’t want to spend a lot of time dwelling on the fact that they put a man with a blood clot on an international flight. Or that he went to practice after getting home from the Jacksonville Jaguars game. Or that his treatment included craziness like staying awake for 36 hours and having to take a nap before the Jags game.
I don’t even want to spend a lot of time on head coach Nick Sirianni’s Monday press conference in which he looked like a deer caught in headlights as he took questions about decisions regarding Hurts and his health that he had no part in making. If he didn’t know how much team owner Jeffrey Lurie and general manager Howie Roseman DIDN’T value him, Sirianni knows it now.
What I want to focus on is the fact that Hurts is covered by a union. And how he was treated in this situation shows that the National League Football Players Association, the union to which all of the NFL’s players pay dues, is, quite possibly, the least effective union in the nation, if not the world.
The NFLPA, the folks who are supposed to stand up for the players when the billionaires that own these teams start to act out William Rhoden’s book “40 Million Dollar Slaves” in real time, didn’t say ANYTHING about the Hurts situation until Tuesday, after the league announced that it wouldn’t be penalizing the Eagles for the MVP of Super Bowl 59’s care.
“The NFLPA is not aware of any NFL investigation into the medical care provided to Jalen Hurts. 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.”
This a very professional statement. Well done.
But if past is prologue, it doesn’t mean a whole lot. And the reason why I feel that way is because of, well, the treatment of a former teammate of Jalen Hurts’s at the University of Alabama.
In 2020, University of Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was drafted fifth overall by the Miami Dolphins. Now, the Dolphins hadn’t had anyone decent at QB since a dude named Dan Marino was throwing the ball for them, so hopes were high that this Heisman Trophy finalist would take them to the Promised Land. He got them to the playoffs, but before the regular season started, the Dolphins cut him from the team.
Why? Because he spent more time off the field than on it due to the concussions he seemed to get almost every time he took the field. Although the league had instituted a concussion protocol as part of the settlement with the families of former players who had died of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a progressive degenerative brain disease that happens when you bang your head a lot, there were times when Tagovailoa would be on the field anyway.
Now, if the NFL and/or the NFLPA were worth a damn, Tua Tagovailoa wouldn’t be anywhere near a football field unless he were sideline reporting or visiting old teammates. But since it isn’t, Tagovailoa is suiting up for the Atlanta Falcons these days…and considering the number of times his bell has already been rung, that’s irresponsible as hell.
But no one from the NFLPA said, “Hey! This is one of our union members. Let’s get him off the field permanently before his brain turns into Swiss cheese!”
Which is why I have no faith in any investigation the union would lead.
One thing that just about everyone can agree on is that we all hope that Hurts makes a full recovery. By all accounts, he’s a good dude who has made the city look pretty good at times.
But he deserved better all the way around on this one. Not only from his team, but also from his union.
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