A.J. Brown hilariously refutes negative Hurts report originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

Eagles fans are pretty high on the 2022 team with training camp just a few weeks away, but the big question mark remains hanging over Jalen Hurts.

Is he the QB of the future? Is he good enough to lead this team on a playoff run? Just how good is he, actually? We don't know!

It's going to be a big year for the third-year QB's career, and any intel on how the organization feels about Hurts as their QB1 is worth paying attention to.

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So when long-time Eagles reporter and insider Derrick Gunn dropped a few nuggets on a recent JAKIB Media podcast, fans paid attention. Here's what Gunn reported:

"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 with, 'So what are you thinking?' And the direct answer was, 'He's got a ways to go.' And that's not very encouraging when you hear all this offseason news, 'He's worked with this quarterback guru, he's working on his mechanics, he has a second year in Nick Sirianni's playbook.'

"[...]

"The organization is not very comfortable right now with Jalen Hurts. Now, there's a lot of time between now and training camp and the regular season. But as of right now, the results have been iffy on this guy."

Hmm. Not great!

Gunn isn't one to simply toss out something like this without having done his homework, so I'm inclined to believe this is true and real stuff that he was getting from the team back in May. Are things better right now in July? Maybe! Maybe not!

But it seems Hurts' best friend and new top wide receiver option A.J. Brown heard about Gunn's reporting on Monday, and was none too pleased with the perceived hate.

So Brown took to Twitter to fire off two aggrieved, and hilarious, tweets debunking the buzz.

His first tweet was some normal 'defend your guy' stuff, paired with the phrase "water is above us" which has me largely lost:

And then we get the second tweet in which Brown makes himself look good, clowns the bygone Donovan McNabb-Terrell Owens beef era, and also makes a Vince Papale joke:

What an efficient tweet. So much silliness with so few characters. Such an abundance of good, Philly-specific references. I had to triple-check to make sure it was real.

Eagles right tackle Lane Johnson joined the fray to voice his support:

Overall, what do we have here? Hurts' teammates sticking up for him in the face of some totally fair questions about his talent level as a starting quarterback in the NFL.

He's shown us he can be a useful starter in the league. He led the Eagles to a playoff berth in his first full season as a starter. That's good! Not every QB can do that.

But is he The Guy? We still don't know. And while Brown is totally justified in being frustrated with those kinds of questions, reporters and fans are also totally justified in asking them. It's just the nature of the game: until Hurts shows us truly elite stuff, we can wonder whether he'll be able to do it.

One thing's for certain: both on and off the field, A.J. Brown is entertaining as hell. I'm so glad he's an Eagle.