{"id":889694,"date":"2026-10-21T05:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T05:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/889694\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T05:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T05:58:10","slug":"allen-sills-dismisses-concern-about-team-physician-bias-as-nonsense-its-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/889694\/","title":{"rendered":"Allen Sills dismisses concern about team physician bias as “nonsense” (it’s not)"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to whether the Eagles properly handled the health care provided to Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts for his blood clots, the NFL is hardly a neutral, disinterested party. It was the NFL, through chief medical officer Allen Sills, that arranged for the evaluation of Hurts in London, which is part of what the league does to support all NFL teams that are imposed upon to play internationally.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Sills spoke to reporters<\/a> at the quarterly ownership meeting in New York. And he arguably protested too much when it comes to lingering concerns about the NFL\u2019s culture regarding medical care for players.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny idea or any suggestion that a team physician is ever being influenced by a coach, a General Manager, a team owner \u2014 it just doesn\u2019t happen,\u201d Sills insisted. \u201cThere is no doctor who is taking orders from a football person, a non-medical person. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Setting aside whether he\u2019s directly aware of how all 32 teams operate (he surely isn\u2019t), in this context an express order isn\u2019t needed. Team-hired doctors understand the assignment; the teams want players to be available to play. In nearly every case, the player wants to be available, too. Any doctor who develops a reputation in the building for being unnecessarily cautious when it comes to clearing a player to play will inevitably be replaced by a doctor who will.<\/p>\n

And those assignments are very lucrative, both in what they pay to the doctor and in how they provide the doctor with built-in marketing for the rest of the doctor\u2019s practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe notion that there are external factors or that any of our physicians would put a player in harm\u2019s way, that\u2019s nonsense,\u201d Sills said.<\/p>\n

The dismissal of that possibility does not mesh with the facts. The mere existence of the Unaffiliated Neurotrauma Consultant program for diagnosing concussions and clearing players to return from concussions directly refutes Sills\u2019s contention. If team doctors could be relied upon in every instance to set aside the unspoken (because it doesn\u2019t need to be said) urgency to find that a potentially concussed player is good to go or to clear a concussed player to return, there would be NO NEED for doctors with no team affiliation.<\/p>\n

As to most other health issues, the situation isn\u2019t as critical. Orthopedic injuries don\u2019t put a player at risk, and a shot or two of Toradol never hurt anyone, right? (Well, maybe not<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

In those rare instances where the shared desire for the team and the player to \u201cbe available\u201d intersects with the player\u2019s best interests as a patient, there\u2019s inherent pressure on the team-hired doctor to get along by going along.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unfortunate that Sills refused to recognize this basic fact. Hopefully, he said it for P.R. purposes and not because he truly believes it.<\/p>\n

Finally, Sills invoked \u201cpatient privacy concerns\u201d to justify not taking questions about the treatment Hurts received. That\u2019s a copout. Hurts has already authorized the issuance of multiple statements that shared with the world various details about his private medical issues. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to use \u201cpatient privacy concerns\u201d as a shield when, in reality, the player quite possibly would authorize doctors to answer any and all questions about a situation that has already become extremely public. At this point, why would Hurts object to his doctors explaining what they did and why they did it?<\/p>\n

Through it all, the NFL and the Eagles simply want to move on. All\u2019s well that ends, as the late NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue liked to say. Hopefully, this one won\u2019t end until all necessary questions are asked and answered \u2014 and until the NFL recognizes that, for certain health conditions, a UNC-style approach is needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it comes to whether the Eagles properly handled the health care provided to Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-889694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}