The Eagles\u2019 handling of quarterback Jalen Hurts and his blood clot in Week 5 has sparked plenty of criticism of both the team and the league, which has been in lockstep with the team.<\/p>\n
And some of that criticism has come from the NFL\u2019s business partners.<\/p>\n
The NFL owns 10 percent of ESPN. That hasn\u2019t stopped some at ESPN from offering sharp criticism of the league and the Eagles for the situation. On Wednesday\u2019s First Take, for instance, Chris \u201cMad Dog\u201d Russo went off on the situation. (Stephen A. Smith and others had sharp criticism of the situation on Tuesday\u2019s show, too.)<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing if I may about this whole thing with Hurts, the Eagles did a horrendous job<\/a>, OK?\u201d Russo said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m gonna believe the NFL now? That doesn\u2019t have grass fields, that didn\u2019t do anything with CTE until they were forced to. That wants to play an eighteenth game for the safety of the players, when they want to play another game.<\/p>\n \u201cSo the NFL now is saying, \u2018Well, they didn\u2019t do anything wrong. . . . The Eagles were great with this.\u2019 I don\u2019t trust them. Furthermore, the Eagles throwing Sirianni out there to meet the media. That is ridiculous. \u2029I mean, he doesn\u2019t know. I mean, he\u2019s not the \u2014 put a trainer out there. Put a team doctor. You made the poor guy answer questions with a hungry media in Philadelphia. That was a disgrace.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the NFL can\u2019t sit there and [say] they care about safety. They care about safety, why are we going for an eighteenth game? They add it to a seventeenth game. Here\u2019s the guy that had a blood clot, that got back to the hotel at 3:00 a.m., played the football game, they came back to \u2014 flew across the country, came back and said, \u2018Well, he\u2019s gonna miss this week against Carolina.\u2019 Then they came back and said, \u2018He\u2019s gonna miss four games.\u2019 And then they came back and said, \u2018He\u2019s gone for the year.\u2019 That\u2019s ridiculous. . . . Now, come on. Literally, come on.\u201d<\/p>\n The NFL also has a content partnership with The Athletic, posting items from the New York Times subsidiary at NFL.com. That didn\u2019t stop Mike Silver of The Athletic (a former employee of the league who has talked openly<\/a> about certain subjects being off limits when he worked for NFL Network and NFL.com) from going all-in with his criticism of the Eagles and the league<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cImagine medically evaluating an employee on an off-site work assignment, subjecting him to well-documented risk factors that could exacerbate the condition \u2014 and then having his symptoms worsen to the point where they are potentially life-threatening,\u201d Silver wrote in a column posted on Wednesday.<\/p>\n \u201cThen imagine proclaiming to the world that you are in no way culpable, and that any suggestion that you could possibly have handled the situation differently is an affront to logic and decency. Throw in a touch of indignant condescension, and voila: You are the National Football League.\u201d<\/p>\n Silver specifically targeted Tuesday\u2019s effort by NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills to downplay the situation.<\/p>\n \u201cNow the NFL, whose medical officials were in the loop when Hurts\u2019 initial blood clot was discovered the night before the game, is in full cover-your-ass mode,\u201d Silver wrote. \u201cThat\u2019s a curious strategy, given the dots that qualified physicians might connect, made worse by the assertion that none of us \u2014 even experts in the field \u2014 are qualified to question any of it.\u201d<\/p>\n The secrecy, disguised as \u201cpatient privacy concerns\u201d (despite multiple statements that spell out Hurts\u2019s diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis in full detail), has only added to the interest in getting answers.<\/p>\n