Eagles Should Have Gone The Transparency Route With A.J. Brown

PHILADELPHIA - Some wounds are self-inflicted.

The Eagles’ devotion to “competitive advantage” is rooted in Nick Sirianni’s desire to explore every avenue, even the most superfluous, with the idea of gaining any potential inch available.

Considering the Eagles' head coach enters Sunday’s 2025 rematch with the New York Giants as the third-winningest coach in the Super Bowl era behind Hall of Famers John Madden and George Allen, he’s earned the benefit of the doubt in most instances.

However, playing the “we’ll see” card with A.J. Brown this week in favor of sliding the scale toward transparency is a miscalculation.

We'll See

Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni coaches from the sidelines during a Thursday Night Football game between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford on Oct. 9, 2025. | Julian Leshay Guadalupe/NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Attempted outside trade manifestations with a player who is a gossip column favorite had already long existed.

Those fairy tales tend to spike when Brown hits social media with something cryptic that enables overactive imaginations to scatter in dozens of different directions with the baton they’ve been handed.

Add in Brown coming out of a big game with the difference-making play to seal a 28-22 win at Minnesota with no obvious injury before subsequently showing up on with a hamstring issue two weeks ahead of the trade deadline in a social media world fueled by conspiracies?

You do the math.

My inbox has already been spammed with the ‘Are the Eagles trading A.J.?’ low-hanging fruit.

From everything I’ve gathered, my understanding is that Brown is not going anywhere, and that’s an answer met with all the enthusiasm of a cell phone interrupting a team meeting during the tin foil hat club’s latest quorum.

There is a whole constituency that isn’t going to believe Brown is staying in Philadelphia until 4:00 ET on Nov. 4, and when the deadline passes, will simply recede into the shadows until the next unforced error creates another manufactured controversy.

The Eagles will surely claim that the imagination of others is not their problem.

However, when you're helping your own flagship radio station program their entire day with what’s going to be framed as “rat poison” after the boomerang it causes, doesn’t taking control of the narrative sound like the better option?

A simple ‘A.J. is dealing with something he suffered in the Vikings game and will need to work through it’ early in the week quashes any speculation and does more to limit distraction than fostering a village full of grifting content creators.

MORE NFL: Eagles Will Be Without All-Pro, Two Other Starters Vs. NY Giants