Donovan McNabb calls it "terrifying." He's right, and he's also the wrong messenger. McNabb wasn't in the training room, didn't see the chart, and doesn't know what the Eagles' medical staff knew on the day Jalen Hurts was cleared to play. Neither does anyone else who spent this week prosecuting the case on television.
That doesn't make the Eagles clean. It makes the noise premature.
Here's what we actually have. Hurts was diagnosed with blood clots, and the diagnosis ended his 2026 season. Reporting since has traced an ugly arc, from a clot in his leg to clots in both lungs. The Eagles' decision to let him play against Jacksonville now sits at the center of the argument, and a former Super Bowl champion has already called for the organization to face consequences. Nick Sirianni has been asked, publicly, whether his quarterback still trusts him.
The consensus is that Philadelphia botched this. I'll go a step further in one direction and a step back in another: the outcome is bad enough that the Eagles now carry the burden of proof, and no amount of "we followed protocol" closes a case where a leg clot became bilateral pulmonary clots. But the people demanding answers loudest are the ones with the least standing to demand them. McNabb is an Eagles legend with a microphone, not a physician with a chart. His reaction is a fan's reaction, wearing a helmet on the shelf.
The only question worth asking is documentary: what did the team's medical staff know, when did they know it, and who signed off on Jacksonville? That gets answered by the league's advisors and the medical records, not by a former quarterback's podcast circuit.
My read: the reputational damage is already done and it's secondary. The real cost is internal. Every Eagles player who wakes up with tightness in his chest next August will remember this and get a second opinion before he tells the team anything. That's the tax. Sirianni can't legislate it away with a press conference.
I expect the Eagles to tighten their clearance process visibly before the offseason, and I expect the loudest critics to declare victory when they do, as if the change were the point. It isn't. The point is that a 2026 season is gone and nobody outside the building can yet say whether it had to be. Prove me wrong by producing a timeline that clears them.
