Told ya this thing would be totally blown out of proportion.

Earlier today we did the story on Derrick Gunn talking about Jalen Hurts’ struggles in a meaningless summer practice session.

He said:

“I know it’s a controlled environment, and like I tell you guys all the time, I don’t get too hyped about OTAs, mini camp, or even training camp, because it’s controlled. But when I asked a few people back in late May about where Jalen Hurts was in his progress, one person said ‘let me just give you a scenario of what he went through one day in practice – it was a 10-play scenario, he had three picks, four incompletions, and three sacks.’ That was his 10-play series…. and I followed up and said ‘what are you thinking?’ And the answer was, ‘he’s got a ways to go,’ and that’s not very encouraging…”

Now we know that D Gunn is not a bullshitter. Au contraire! – he is well respected in the Eagles locker room and doesn’t make shit up. I can’t physically enter his brain to confirm that, but I feel pretty comfortable declaring it.

However, Eagles players are now starting to respond to this. Here’s A.J. Brown calling the report fake and Lane Johnson emoji affirming Brown’s take:

 

For some clarity here, you don’t technically get “sacked” in 7v7 with no rushers. Basically they’d just say you held the ball too long and/or they’d time it out to a point where they felt like a real pass rush would have gotten there. There’s no actual defensive end coming at Hurts to bring him down, so we’d probably call the whole thing semantics.

Brown then tweeted this:

Not sure why, but that made me laugh. It’s a very Philly tweet. These guy is assimilating very quickly!

Here’s what I know:

  1. Gunner doesn’t make shit up (we’re pretty sure)
  2. he prefaced the explanation by saying he doesn’t “get too hyped about OTAs, mini camp, or even training camp”
  3. people are so obsessed with the Eagles and want Birds information so badly that relatively peripheral things like this get blown out of proportion
  4. A.J. Brown is funny and might have a little Kyrie Irving in him. The line about water being “above us” is hilarious because technically clouds are made of water.

Anyway, it’s almost training camp season. If the players don’t like Gunner reporting this, just wait until the beats start logging every single  throw and catch while broadcasting to tens of thousands of Twitter followers.