EAGLES FOUND A BLOOD CLOT IN LONDON, PLAYED THEIR QB ANYWAY

The Eagles ruled Jalen Hurts out of Sunday's game against Carolina with a superficial blood clot in his calf, and the timeline the team published is the part worth reading twice. Hurts went to the training room on October 8 and told the staff he had been cleated in the Rams game four days earlier. The team flew to London, ran an ultrasound Saturday out of an abundance of caution, found the clot, and had doctors clear him to start anyway. He played the whole game, went 21 of 40 for 220 yards and a touchdown, and lost 19-17 to the Jaguars. Those same doctors asked for a follow-up scan within 72 hours. It came Wednesday night, showed movement in the clot, and now Philadelphia is publicly "determining the appropriate course of treatment." NFL Network's Ian Rapoport said that treatment often means blood thinners, which would keep Hurts off the field entirely, and called him out indefinitely. So in walks Tanner McKee, a 6-foot-6 sixth-round pick with two career starts, both of them Week 18 games nobody watched sober. He gets Carolina on three days of first-team reps while Saquon Barkley's hamstring and Will Shipley's foot sit on the injury report. The Eagles also released Andy Dalton, so the backup behind the backup is a rookie named Cole Payton.

Why you should give a shit: Philly cleared him Saturday and shut him down by Wednesday, so if your fantasy team, your parlay, or your January hopes run through the Eagles, they now run through Tanner McKee and whatever the next ultrasound says.