Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts had a chance to golf with Barack Obama earlier this week. Hurts said that, while he was present for the round involving Obama, owner Jeffrey Lurie, and running back Saquon Barkley, Hurts didn’t play — because his contract prevents him from golfing.
As it turns out, Hurts’s contract doesn’t contain a no-golf clause.
Via Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the team said Hurts is simply honoring a verbal request from Lurie, who didn’t want his team’s franchise quarterback to become obsessed with golf.
It’s still unusual, an unofficial Kyler Murray study clause-style term. Murray’s controversial requirement to spend a certain amount of time each week working on the playbook and game plan was dropped by the team once it became a thing.
Here, there’s nothing to drop. Hurts is allowed to golf if he wants to. He’s just staying away from it, so that he doesn’t end up spending a bunch of time practicing and playing.
In a way, it’s a belated backhanded slap at former Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, who arguably spent too much of his non-football time honing his golf skills. No matter how good anyone is as a golfer, it takes a lot of time to get to the maximum level of performance. There’s a point at which that can impact the player reaching his maximum level of football performance, if the desire to work on golf becomes a temptation to not work on football.
