This week on Girlfriends + Football, the show went somewhere unexpected, and necessary. Instead of the usual game-by-game breakdown, the crew paused to address the medical situation unfolding in Philadelphia, where Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts was placed on injured reserve after being diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and bilateral pulmonary emboli. That's two blood clots in his lungs.
The Medicine (Because You Should Know This)
Dezi walked through the anatomy clearly: veins bring blood to the heart; arteries take it away. Everything, even the smallest vessels, eventually connects to bigger vessels. A clot that starts shallow can travel deeper.
A superficial vein thrombosis is exactly what it sounds like: a clot in a vein close to the skin's surface. These are relatively common. Standard treatment is warm compresses, anti-inflammatories, monitoring, sometimes aspirin. They're concerning, but manageable.
The trouble is that somewhere between 6% and 40% of superficial clots can progress into a deep vein thrombosis, a clot in the deeper vein system. The range is that wide because individual factors matter enormously: your medical history, family history, clot size, clot location, whether you have underlying conditions that make you prone to clotting.
A DVT becomes life-threatening when it breaks off and travels to the lungs, causing a pulmonary embolism (PE). Hurts developed bilateral PEs, meaning clots in both lungs.
The treatment for DVT and PE is anticoagulation medication or blood thinners. These work, but they create a new problem: they leave you susceptible to dangerous bleeding. A head injury, a ruptured spleen, even a bloody nose on blood thinners can become catastrophic. That's why contact football isn't just inadvisable, it's off the table.
Hurts will be on anticoagulation for at minimum three months, likely longer. He'll also need a broader hematologic workup to see if there's an underlying clotting condition, things like Factor V Leiden, Protein C deficiency, or Protein S deficiency. If one of those is found, he may need to be on blood thinners long-term. The implications of that, as Dezi put it, are something she wasn't willing to speculate about out loud. You can fill in the dots yourself.
The Questions Nobody Can Actually Answer
The internet, predictably, has been ready to fire the team physician. Dezi wants to slow that down.
A few things the public simply does not know:
What Jalen Hurts' personal medical history looks like. There may be risk factors or prior clotting history that changed the calculus entirely.
What the risk-benefit conversation with Hurts actually sounded like before he played the London game. Medical staff would have gone over the risk of the clot progressing. Did they? Almost certainly. What he was told, and what he decided? Unknown.
Whether he was already on aspirin or another medication when he boarded that plane home.
How thorough the initial ultrasound in London was, whether it covered the whole leg, whether additional blood tests were run.
Whether the DVT was already present when the superficial clot was first found, or whether it developed during the flight home.
That last one is worth sitting with. Flying is a known risk factor for DVT. Long flights, immobility, reduced cabin pressure, these things matter. But as the crew noted: Hurts isn't flying coach. He has room to move. And the medical team may well have had him on something prophylactic for that flight before any of us heard a word about it.
The NFL's review found the handling appropriate. That's not nothing.
Also worth noting, as Dezi reminded everyone: the team physician for an NFL franchise is typically an orthopedic or sports medicine doctor. They are not pulmonologists, cardiologists, or hematologists. When a case moves beyond their domain, and this one did, they consult specialists. Calling for the orthopedic to be fired because a pulmonary embolism wasn't caught faster misunderstands how medical decision-making works. They make calls based on what specialists told them.
The Wells Criteria (and Why Athletes Aren't Immune)
Dezi shared a clinical tool called the Wells Criteria, a risk calculator providers use to assess DVT likelihood. It asks about things like recent surgery, immobilization, cancer treatment, calf swelling larger than three centimeters compared to the other leg, pitting edema (swelling that leaves an imprint when you press your thumb in), previous blood clots, and whether another diagnosis is more likely.
If you ran Hurts through that list at the time of his initial presentation? He probably scores very low. Which is exactly the point. Athletes in exceptional health can still get clots. Dezi told a story from early in her career: a marathon runner came in with calf pain. No risk factors. No swelling. Looked totally normal on examination. She almost sent him home. She did an ultrasound anyway. DVT, sitting right there in his calf.
The Wells score would have said: don't even bother. Good thing she did anyway.
Warning Signs to Actually Know
Because the show used this moment to educate, not just narrate: here's what to watch for.
DVT in the leg:
Unexplained swelling in one leg (key: one side, not both)
Pain or tenderness, usually in the back of the leg
Warmth, redness, or discoloration
Pulmonary embolism (clot in the lungs):
Shortness of breath
Chest pain
Rapid heart rate
Coughing up blood
Lightheadedness or feeling faint
And if you're in a higher-risk category, if you've had cancer, if you smoke, if you're significantly overweight, if you've had recent surgery or been immobile for an extended period, you need to be especially attentive to any of the above.
As Dezi put it: an ultrasound is non-invasive, relatively inexpensive, and quick. If something feels wrong with your leg, advocate for yourself.
Fantasy Picks from Gina (Week 7)
Gina from Fan Girl Football came through with her weekly waiver wire breakdown.
Quarterback: Jordan Love against the Detroit Lions. Detroit is allowing the most fantasy points to opposing QBs through week seven. The game is indoors in Detroit (no weather issues), it's a divisional matchup that could turn into a shootout, and Love's weapons — Christian Watson, Matthew Golden, Tucker Kraft — can stretch any defense. Love is averaging 18.6 fantasy points per game and already showed his ceiling with a 25.3-point outing against Chicago. Start him with confidence.
Running Back: DeAndre Swift against New England on Thursday Night Football. What makes Swift appealing in PPR formats is that he doesn't need rushing yards to produce — his receiving ability out of the backfield gives him another scoring path. Chicago looked sharp in their 31-point performance against Atlanta; if New England brings pressure, expect check-downs. He's a solid RB2 play.
Wide Receiver: DeVonta Smith against the Cowboys. Smith missed two weeks with a hamstring injury but came back in Week 6 and looked like himself against Carolina. The Cowboys are soft on receivers, and with Hurts' backup now starting, the Eagles will likely lean more on intermediate passing routes that fit Smith's game.
She Did That
One more story the crew couldn’t let pass without comment. Imogene Painter is an eight-year-old girl from Pennsylvania who spent the entire season playing tackle football on her Catholic school team. She held her own. She helped her teammates get to the playoffs. And then, once they got there, the archdiocese decided she had to sit out.
The Women’s Football Alliance, including teams from Buffalo and across Pennsylvania, came out publicly in support of Immy, as her family calls her. There’s a Change.org petition circulating to get the decision reversed. The crew’s take was simple: she’s eight years old. This isn’t a conversation about men’s sports or competitive advantage from puberty. It’s children playing sports together, and she earned her spot.
The show is Girlfriends + Football, and supporting women in the sport is the whole point. If you want to look her up, find the petition, or learn more about the teams rallying behind her, the information is out there. And if Immy’s mom is reading this: the crew would love to have you on the show.
Catch us next week on YouTube LIVE Wednesday, October 28th.
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Until next week, Happy Football!
