Eagles' Star Rises Above 'Frustration'

PHILADELPHIA - The Eagles are a Page Six dream, a constant churn of celebrity-filled gossip.

But it has nothing to do with the Hollywood stars who’ve piled on the bandwagon of the NFL’s most successful team. It's got to so with the playmakers on the football field.

Former Eagles’ superstar and Delaware State coach DeDean Jackson was the latest to fuel the Cindy Adams fire by hinting at the rift between Super Bowl MVP quarterback Jalen Hurts and star receiver A.J. Brown.

“As you can tell, it’s something else going on. And I got a great relationship with [Brown]. I respect him. I can’t say it. But I know it’s something else going on,” Jackson said on his House of Action Podcast. “It’s not all about football, it’s not all about X’s and O’s. I’ve had situationships with QB’s I didn’t necessarily like. And when it ain’t there, it sticks out like a sore thumb. That’s all imma say.”

By intimating plenty and saying little, what Jackson did was drop a bomb and leave the scene, so the first-responder pundits had free rein to allow their imaginations to roam freely.

At Hurts’ weekly press conference on Wednesday, long before Jackson’s comments, Hurts was asked about the reports of frustrations that appear to be boiling over around him.

"I take a lot of the responsibility and I get a lot of attention when things are going well and when things are not going so well," Hurts said. "I never run away from holding myself accountable, and I think that’s exactly the approach I’ve taken to doing.

"When I look at this last game [against Detroit], I take great pride in what we do on offense, I take great pride in how we go out there and play as a team and what our flow is. We obviously got work to do and that obviously starts with me. That’s always my approach. It’s always me looking internally first in everything that we do and in due time rise above."

My idea at the presser was to turn the tables on the Eagles’ QB1, asking if Hurts himself ever gets frustrated with all the gossip that has become a cottage industry in Philadelphia based on unrealistic expectations for the offense.

“It comes with the nature of it,” Hurts said. “Everybody is going to have an opinion. I give a lot of respect to those things. Ultimately, we’re all here to do the same thing, so it’s about the pursuit of that, and I’ve always encouraged [others] to try to work together to achieve that.”

For what it’s worth, Hurts’ on-field priority remains as steady as his approve with the end game winning at the finish line.

And 24 of 27 success stories dating back to Week 5 last season say that part of the equation is still performing at an optimal level despite the gossip.

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