A.J. Brown and Jalen Hurts are “not as close as we once were” — but the receiver claims there was not a big blow-up between the pair.
The now-former Eagles teammates — following Brown finally being traded to the Patriots on Monday — were previously close friends, dating back to their days in college.
That relationship faded during their four seasons together in Philly, but Brown has insisted that “nothing happened” between them.
“People just grow apart … life happens,” he told Maria Taylor in an interview for “7PM in Brooklyn.“
“And you just look up sometimes and you find yourself drifting away. And that’s fine, and I think both parties accepted that.”
Asked by Taylor where Brown and Hurts’ relationship stood, the receiver gave a sobering answer.
“Not as close as we once were. I believe that’s fine — there’s no bad blood. There’s actually still a lot of love, I love him. I love him to death, I want him to succeed and accomplish all the things that he wants to accomplish,” Brown said.
“I didn’t truly understand why our friendship became the center of everybody’s attention when it came to football. Because looking back on it, we haven’t been as close as we were (for) a couple years now. But that didn’t stop anything. We still competed, we still pushed each other, we still led the team.”
While the team had great success during Brown’s time on the Eagles — reaching two Super Bowls and winning one — tensions grew surrounding his role on the team’s run-heavy offense.
And following the team’s Super Bowl 2025 win over the Chiefs, Brown explained to Taylor, “I think the expectations that we placed upon ourselves became too much.”
The Eagles lost in the Wild-Card round to the 49ers in their attempted Super Bowl defense this past season.
“You have to understand, this city expects you to win every single year, and rightfully so,” Brown said.
“That’s what we work for. But the expectations that we drilled in our brains, it’s like: ‘We have to win, we have to win, we have to win.’
“And you can become so overly focused and start pressing. And I think this team just started to do that over a period of time. Because we still had great players, and it was still the really core group of guys, and we added some more guys. But things just started to go left.”
Brown finished last season with 1,003 yards — his fewest in an Eagles jersey — and at times took to social media to seemingly voice his frustrations at his lack of involvement.
“Not every moment I can say handled the best way,” he admitted to Taylor. “Especially the ones I was on social media, that was wrong.”
Now, Brown will hope for a fresh start in New England.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
