Jalen Hurts’ blood clot diagnosis is going to change how teams and agents handle player health, according to veteran NFL agent Leigh Steinberg, who told OutKick the episode exposes gaps that need to be closed before another player’s life is put at risk.
“The words ‘blood clot’ would set off an alarm bell in my head,” Steinberg said. “I would have certainly been in touch with the Philadelphia medical staff, with the Eagles medical staff, and asked questions because blood clot is a red flag.”
Hurts is expected to miss the rest of the season after testing revealed deep vein thrombosis and bilateral pulmonary emboli — clots in both lungs. On Oct. 25, the NFL and NFL Players Association announced a joint review of the case after the union demanded an investigation.
Here’s the timeline the Eagles have laid out: Hurts first sought treatment Oct. 8 after telling medical staff he’d been cleated during the Oct. 4 game against the Rams. He practiced fully, then flew to London, where an ultrasound on Oct. 10 found a superficial clot in his left calf. Team doctors and London physicians cleared him to play the next day against Jacksonville, judging that activity and mobility were important to his recovery. After Hurts returned to Philadelphia, a follow-up ultrasound on Oct. 14 showed the clot had moved. He went on injured reserve Oct. 17.
Steinberg isn’t accusing anyone of malpractice, and he was explicit that only medical experts can settle whether the Eagles made the right calls at each step.
“Should he have played in London? That’s an open question,” Steinberg said. “This is a medical question which can only be analyzed by experts in the field of blood clot diagnosis.”
He also pushed back on any suggestion that Hurts’ agent, Nicole Lynn, dropped the ball by not intervening sooner.
“I believe that his agent was diligent. I know his agent, she’s excellent,” Steinberg said.
Still, Steinberg said the case is a reminder that an agent’s job doesn’t stop at the negotiating table.
“This just highlights the active role that every agent has to play in safeguarding the health both short term and long term,” he said. “It’s where you have to put football aside for a moment, and the pressures of a season.”
The league says it stands behind the Eagles
NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills has already defended how Philadelphia handled the situation. “I have complete confidence in the Eagles’ medical staff and their handling of this situation,” Sills said. The players union wants a full investigation before anyone draws conclusions, and Front Office Sports reported Oct. 25 that the league and union were still hashing out the process, with a source saying the probe hadn’t formally launched.
The medical distinction matters here. Superficial vein thrombosis, found near the skin’s surface, is typically far less dangerous than deep vein thrombosis, where a clot can break loose and travel to the lungs — causing the kind of pulmonary embolism Hurts now has. That gap between the initial diagnosis in London and what showed up a few days later in Philadelphia is exactly what investigators will have to untangle.
Steinberg said he knows Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and general manager Howie Roseman personally and believes the organization takes player health seriously. He raised the possibility that Hurts’ condition simply kept progressing even with appropriate care, and said he’s seen no evidence proving the diagnosis was mishandled.
The Eagles and Lynn have described Hurts as clinically stable with no significant functional limitations and expect a full recovery with no long-term effects. He’s on blood thinners, which rules out contact work, but he can stay around the team and keep conditioning.
A league-wide wake-up call
Steinberg predicted the case will reverberate well beyond Philadelphia. “The progression of this from a marginal health problem to a potential life-threatening problem is going to put the league on alert,” he said. Asked if other agents are already talking about it, he didn’t name names but said, “I think they should be.”
Steinberg has spent years pushing the league on brain injury awareness through his own foundation and medical conferences, and he framed the Hurts situation the same way — as a fiduciary duty agents owe their clients that goes beyond contracts and endorsements.
There’s also a football reality underneath all of this. Hurts signed a five-year, $255 million extension in 2023 and led Philadelphia to a Super Bowl. With him sidelined, the Eagles are relying on Tanner McKee, a sixth-round pick out of Stanford in 2023. Steinberg called the gap between the two “a precipitous drop off in talent” and warned that another injury at quarterback would push Philadelphia even further down its depth chart.
“It alters the balance of power in football,” Steinberg said. “And it’s a big setback for the Eagles.”
But he said the real stakes go beyond wins and losses. “The issue here is long-term health,” he said. “The issue is safeguarding him from dire consequences.”
