The Philadelphia Eagles are scheduled to visit the White House on Monday, but one key player won’t be making the trip and that’s Jalen Hurts.
The Eagles quarterback won’t be at the team’s Super Bowl celebration in Washington, D.C., because he has a “scheduling conflict,” according to NBC News White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor. NBC also reported that several other players will likely miss the event. The Eagles have known since mid-March that the White House celebration would be on April 28.
The fact that Hurts won’t be showing up isn’t a huge surprise. He had hinted last week that he probably wouldn’t be making the trip.
Hurts was in New York recently for the 2025 TIME100 gala and while he was walking the red carpet, a reporter asked him if he was “planning on visiting the White House,” and Hurts gave about as noncommittal of an answer that you can give to a question like that.
The Super Bowl-winning quarterback offered a simple “um,” before walking away from the reporter after about eight seconds of awkward silence. Although Hurts didn’t say anything during those eight seconds, he did make a few facial expressions that seemed to hint that he would NOT be making the trip to DC.
At the NFL’s annual league meeting earlier this month, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said the White House trip was “optional” for every player on the team, so no one will be punished for missing the event.
“Our culture is that these are optional things,” Lurie said. “If you want to enjoy this, come along and we’ll have a great time and if you don’t, it is totally an optional thing.”
The Eagles didn’t visit the White House after winning Super Bowl LII in February 2018. That victory came during Donald Trump’s first term in office and after several players made it clear that they would be skipping the event if the Eagles went to the White House, Trump decided to rescind the team’s invitation.
There had been some speculation that the Eagles weren’t going to go this year but that was quickly cleared up when the accepted an invite in early March.
“We just felt this is a time honored tradition being invited by the White House,” Lurie said about why his team accepted the invite. “So there was no reticence whatsoever. To be celebrated at the White House is a good thing. There were special circumstances back [in 2018] that were very different, and so this was kind of an obvious choice and look forward to it.”
One Eagles player who will definitely be in attendance on Monday is Saquon Barkley. The Eagles running back actually spent some time with Trump over the weekend at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Trump actually attended Philadelphia’s 40-22 Super Bowl win over Kansas City in February, becoming the first sitting president to attend the NFL’s biggest game.
As for Hurts, he won’t be making the trip to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
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