On Sunday, Oct. 11, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts started a game in London against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Nothing was inherently unusual about Hurts starting a game. Hurts is the starting quarterback for a team in the National Football League (NFL); he starts football games all the time. Everything surrounding that start, however, was highly unusual.
The night before the game, doctors discovered a blood clot in Hurts’ calf. He was sent to a nearby hospital for treatment. While in the hospital, doctors told Hurts not to sleep, as doing so could be potentially life-threatening. Hurts was kept awake until 4 a.m., at which point doctors finally let him sleep.
The next day, after being released from the hospital, Hurts met with the team’s doctors prior to the game. Despite knowing that blood clots had kept him hospitalized the night before, the team doctor cleared him to play. The Eagles ultimately lost to the Jaguars 19-17, with Hurts completing 21 of his 40 passes for 220 yards and a touchdown.
After the game, despite having a blood clot, Hurts flew back to Philadelphia with the team. Doctors warn that patients with blood clots should never fly, since the prolonged sitting and low cabin pressure can cause clots to break loose and travel to the lungs, and the lower oxygen levels on airplanes can even lead to new blood clots. Despite the team knowing about his blood clot, they let Hurts fly back anyway.
On Oct. 14, a follow-up ultrasound revealed that the blood clot had moved, and Hurts was ruled out of the Eagles’ upcoming game against the Carolina Panthers. On Oct. 19, Hurts’ agent and the Eagles released a joint statement revealing that the clot had developed into a bilateral pulmonary embolism, meaning that it had traveled to both of his lungs, and Hurts was subsequently placed on blood thinning medication. Because blood thinners stop the normal clotting process that stops bleeding, Hurts cannot play football because any injury would be potentially life-threatening. As such, he is expected to miss the rest of the NFL season. If clots redevelop after his treatment is done, he will have to take blood thinners for the rest of his life, prematurely ending his football career at just 28 years old.
This situation was mishandled by the Eagles organization from the very beginning. If sleeping posed a potentially life-threatening risk to Hurts, then playing in a professional football game should have been out of the question. Instead, team doctors cleared him to play despite the obvious risks. After the game, doctors again neglected to protect Hurts’ health when they allowed him to fly back to the United States, despite guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommending that patients with blood clots wait two to four weeks after starting blood thinners before flying. Hurts’ blood clots were left untreated until after they had spread to his lungs.
Jalen Hurts is lucky to be alive. It didn’t have to be this way. Had doctors started treatment as soon as the blood clot was discovered and waited until it was safe before flying him home, it’s unlikely that the blood clot would have entered his lungs. But doing this would mean that Hurts would have to miss games. Without their star quarterback, Eagles fans may not tune into the game or buy tickets, which would mean less money for the Eagles organization. So, the Eagles let Hurts play, then let him fly back with the team, so that he could hopefully play the next game for them too. The risks to their player’s life meant less to them than winning a football game.
What happened to Jalen Hurts is shocking, but the utter disregard for player safety in the NFL is not a one-time incident. It’s not even the only incident in October. During a Thursday Night Football game against the Carolina Panthers, Green Bay Packers wide receiver Christian Watson hit the ground after a 53-yard reception, and a Panthers player landed on top of him, causing Watson to cough up blood. He was rushed to a nearby hospital by ambulance and while X-rays revealed a broken rib, imaging showed no signs of any internal bleeding. So Watson was released from the hospital and transported back to the stadium. Once back, despite having been diagnosed with a broken rib and coughing up blood just an hour prior, Watson was cleared to return to play.
NFL football is a full-contact sport, and some injuries are inevitable. However, the league has a responsibility to do everything it can to minimize and prevent those injuries, and to prevent them from worsening once they’re discovered. The NFL has failed miserably at this, choosing time and again to prioritize the fans’ entertainment and their profit over the health and safety of the players on the field. Among the most common injuries in football are concussions. After decades of denying the risks associated with repeated concussions, the NFL has only recently begun to take them more seriously, instituting a concussion protocol and hiring unaffiliated neurotrauma consultants to evaluate potential concussions. However, there is a lot more that the NFL can do. A few years ago, a new type of helmet was introduced that significantly reduced the risk of concussions for players. Called guardian caps, these new helmets have a soft shell on the outside to disperse the force of an impact, with a regular helmet underneath. Instead of mandating guardian caps, the NFL allows players to choose whether or not to wear them. Most chose not to.
Non-contact injuries, such as a torn achilles or turf toe, can be worse than a lot of contact injuries, and often keep players out for an entire season. Grass fields have been proven to have a much lower rate of non-contact injuries than turf fields, yet only 16 stadiums have grass fields, while the other 14 continue to have dangerous turf. Grass fields are more expensive to maintain, but for billion-dollar NFL teams, they are relatively inexpensive and available. The Buffalo Bills replaced the grass field in their new stadium in just three days after players complained that it was slightly uneven. Other sports leagues already require grass fields. In order to host a World Cup match in their team’s stadiums this summer, seven NFL owners switched their fields from turf to grass. After the World Cup, all seven tore up the grass field and returned to the turf.
Increasing player safety in the NFL requires more than a few minor changes after public backlash or injuries to star players. It requires a real culture shift within the top levels of the NFL, with teams and executives more concerned with player safety than with profit. The league needs to seriously investigate incidents where teams risk the health or even the life of their players, and give out harsh punishments to those responsible, up to suspensions or even potential bans from working for NFL teams in the future. The league should also immediately mandate guardian caps and grass fields, and whenever science finds a new way to reduce injuries, the league should mandate that.
One potential solution might be having doctors employed by the NFL, rather than a particular team. These doctors would have no interest in whether a team won or lost a particular game, instead evaluating the players objectively and clearing players only when it was truly safe for them to return. This is similar to what the NFL does for concussions now. An unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant is present at every NFL game, watching every hit. Whenever they feel that a hit may have caused a concussion, they will call the referee and have that player removed from the game until they undergo an evaluation. Since the introduction of the unaffiliated neurotrauma consultants in 2022, concussions have fallen to an all-time low.
In the past month, multiple NFL teams have demonstrated a reckless disregard for the safety of their players. The league did nothing, and was content to ignore the situation entirely if not for the massive public backlash. If the NFL truly cares about the safety of their players, they need to prove it.
