A nine-game winning streak isn’t enough to cure the on-again-off-again drama that has engulfed the Eagles for the better part of the last two seasons.
Brandon Graham — the team’s longest-tenured player and captain who is currently on injured reserve with a triceps tear — told 94WIP that quarterback Jalen Hurts and star receiver AJ Brown’s relationship has deteriorated in recent weeks.
“The person [A.J. Brown] that’s complaining need to be accountable. And I’m just being honest, you know what I’m saying. And like, he knows this,” Graham said. “I don’t know the whole story, but I know that [Jalen Hurts] is trying, and I mean, [Brown] could be a little better with how he responds to things.
“And, they was friends before this, but things have changed. I understand that because life happens, but it’s the business side that we have to make sure that we don’t let the personal get in the way of the business. And that’s what we gotta do better right now, because we know it’s an issue, everybody’s seeing some things. But we need to be able to talk things out as men. You know what I’m saying?”
It is unclear what transpired to impact their relationship, but Graham added that they needed to “let personal stuff go.”
Graham later walked back these comments, saying it should’ve remained in-house.
“I made a mistake, and I assumed that it was something that it wasn’t,” Graham told ESPN’s Tim McManus. “I just want to win so bad that I don’t just want to use the media when we need to talk about something and we can fix the problem ourselves. I didn’t add to it in a good light, so that’s my bad.”
At the end of a difficult season in 2023, Brown was called “locker room poison” by another teammate according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The Eagles allegedly had a fractured locker room throughout the end of the season, where they collapsed after a 10-1 start and were blown out by the Buccaneers in the NFC wild-card round.
In an attempt to rebuild team camaraderie, Brown orchestrated a team event where every captain attended an “Escape Room” activity where everyone had to find clues and put them together to leave the room.
After the season, Fox Sports’ Craig Carton noted that the Eagles falling apart was due to a fracture “that would splinter any group of men.”
Carton added that “it is a real significant problem that cannot be fixed.”
Brown is 56th in the league in total targets and 35th in the NFL in targets per game, while new running back Saquon Barkley has taken the reins as the star attraction this season.
Barkley is on pace to break the all-time rushing record while the 11-2 Eagles reclaim the NFC East division title.