Earlier this week, Jeff McLane at The Philadelphia Inquirer dropped a story titled “Eagles players, coaches were shocked by Doug Pederson’s QB switch, resulting in sideline confrontations.”

In the article, Jeff mentions Pro Bowl center Jason Kelce, claiming that the respected veteran went up to his head coach to ask about the decision to yank Jalen Hurts for Nate Sudfeld.

Wrote McLane:

“When Doug Pederson pulled Jalen Hurts for Nate Sudfeld early in the fourth quarter in Sunday’s season finale against Washington, many Eagles players and coaches were shocked and outraged, team sources told The Inquirer.

Some were angry. Two defensive players had to be held back from approaching Pederson. Center Jason Kelce and another offensive starter went to the coach to ask him why he had pulled the starting quarterback with the Eagles trailing by only three.

….

But the way it unfolded left a bitter taste in many of the Eagles’ mouths and they felt embarrassed. Kelce, who made an impassioned plea against tanking last month, hasn’t spoken with reporters since the game, and didn’t respond to a request for comment.”

There’s been a lot of buzz about this article over the past 36 hours. Some are disputing it, citing on-record comments from players who said they knew that Sudfeld would be entering the game at some point. Others pointed out that if there was a confrontation on the sidelines, that NBC cameras would have picked it up.

Kelce himself responded to this, writing the following message on Instagram:

 

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A post shared by Jason Kelce (@jason.kelce)

“At no point was anything from me or anyone else confrontational. We all knew leading into that game that Sudfeld was told to be ready to play…” 

When Kelce goes on to talk about his surprise at the timing of the decision, that’s probably the biggest takeaway. With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that the concern is less about Doug’s decision to pull Hurts, and more about when he decided to do it. If he just yanked Hurts at halftime and sent out Sudfeld for the third quarter, then the tank would have been much less overt and national media types would not be flipping their lids now 72 hours later.

It wasn’t the decision itself, it was the execution that left something to be desired.

Does this mean McLane’s report is incorrect? I don’t know. That’s for you to decide. Most articles like this one have some baseline truth to them, though the specific details can sometimes be fuzzy. In this case, I think Eagles fans would tend to trust the respected veteran player who was actually on the sidelines, but based on reactions from Hurts, Miles Sanders, and K’Von Wallace, it’s obvious that not everybody was happy about the decision and that some lingering resentment does exist.