So many scandals surround the decrepit Washington Football Team that it can be simply easy to move on to the next one. Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is keeping the latest one, their dangerously crumbling stadium, in the news for at least another week.
After Sunday’s Eagles win, Philly fans who had made the trip to Landover fell through a weak railing, injuring themselves and nearly flattening Hurts. The fans say they suffered serious injuries — after Washington officials kicked them out with no offer of help — and an AP photographer was injured in the incident.
“They didn’t ask if anyone was hurt, and they sure as hell didn’t ask if anybody needed medical attention,” said Andrew Collins, 26, of New Jersey, to ESPN. “The only thing the staff said to us was to get the F off the field.”
One of the injured fans said it was the Eagles QB who was asking if they were OK, not team or stadium officials.
“To our knowledge, everyone involved was offered onsite medical evaluation and left the stadium of their own accord,” the team said in a statement.
Hurts played it with incredible aplomb in real time, but appears slightly shaken up with the benefit of some reflection.
“It could have been so much worse,” Hurts said Tuesday. “Just don’t want it to happen again.”
Hurts also penned a letter to team and league officials about what he called the “near-tragic incident…a dangerous situation when portions of the FedEx Field tunnel collapsed.”
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“While I displayed a calm composure, I understand the severity of what happened and am extremely concerned for the well-being of the fans and media,” Hurts wrote. “I would like to know what safeguards the NFL and the Washington Football Team are implementing to prevent this from ever occurring in the future…what happened on Sunday put both fans and players unnecessarily at risk.”
In any just world, Dan Snyder’s “clown show organization,” as Giants head coach Joe Judge would put it, would be heavily sanctioned, both for their negligence with the railing and their callousness towards the injured fans. In this one, the collapse will probably be a key plank of a successful lobbying campaign for the publicly funded new stadium Snyder has always wanted.
FedEx Field — originally known as Jack Kent Cooke Stadium — opened in 1997.