Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is running the option… and by that I mean he’s choosing the option of not attending the Super Bowl celebration at the White House with the rest of his team.
Ever since the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl this past February, there had been a lot of speculation about whether or not the team from the “City of Brotherly Love” would make a trip to the White House.
Rumors that Philly would skip out on the opportunity to visit with President Donald Trump first swirled back in March, and many assumed it would be seen as a protest of the POTUS. But the team and Trump later confirmed that the Eagles would, in fact, “enthusiastically” accept the invitation and head to the White House on Monday, April 28th.
Today is the day.
Though it’s probably important to note that the Philadelphia Eagles will be without their starting quarterback Jalen Hurts. And that shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise. When the Super Bowl winning QB was in New York City last week for the Time 100 Gala (he was selected as one of the 100 most influential people of 2025), Hurts was was asked whether he planned to visit the White House with his team.
Here’s how he responded:
That non-answer was a pretty clear answer.
Fast forward to today, and NBC News White House Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor broke the news officially (though that video above seemed official to me) that Hurts would not be present for the Philadelphia Eagles White House visit, and that he and many others that couldn’t make it cited “scheduling conflicts.”
Might have been good for Jalen Hurts to mention those scheduling conflicts in the TIME interview, right?
Now it’s not out of the realm of possibility for NFL players to have other obligations, but it does seem like the players – that are currently in their offseason – could have made the trip to the White House if they truly wanted to be there.
One player from the Philadelphia Eagles that definitely wanted to be there was running back Saquon Barkely. He’s actually facing backlash right now because he played golf with and hung out with President Trump the day before his team was to visit the White House… because there’s no way to not be political in this day and age.
Barkley responded to the criticism with this message on X earlier today:
“Laughing out loud. Some people are really upset cause I played golfed and flew to the White House with the PRESIDENT. Maybe I just respect the office? Not a hard concept to understand. Just golfed with Obama not too long ago… and look forward to finishing my round with Trump ! Now ya get out my mentions with all this politics and have amazing day.”
Could we end up seeing a rift created on the Philadelphia Eagles team because some players went to the White House for their Super Bowl celebration while others did not? I’m not going to wish that upon them necessarily, though as a fan of another team in the NFC (Go Vikings!), I wouldn’t exactly be opposed to it either.
