A.J. Brown is already defending Eagles QB Jalen Hurts from Philly media

Welcome to Philly, A.J. Brown.

The newest Eagles wide receiver was the team’s prized offseason acquisition when they sent the 18th overall pick in the draft to the Titans before signing Brown, 25, to a four-year contract extension. And he has acclimated nicely, taking part in fellow wideout DeVonta Smith’s charity softball game earlier this summer.

He was out on the field for OTAs, most of which were closed to the media, and will be back out on the field at the NovaCare Complex later this month when training camp kicks off.

This week, Brown got his first taste of the never-ending media cycle that is Eagles coverage in Philly. It’s the slowest time of the year, especially on the NFL calendar, but this city’s insatiable appetite for Eagles news means there’s always something being discussed. And most times, the quarterback position is at the center of those discussions, as was once again the case.

On Friday, longtime Eagles reporter Derrick Gunn, speaking on JAKIB Media’s Sports Take with Rob Ellis and Barrett Brooks, offered up a report on a poor day for Hurts during OTAs earlier this summer.

“When I asked a few people back in late May about where Jalen Hurts was in his progress, one person said, ‘Let me just give you a scenario of what he went through in one day of practice. It’s a 10-play scenario. He had three picks, four incompletions, and three sacks,’” Gunn said. “That was his 10-play series, OK. And I followed up with, ‘So what are you thinking?’ And the answer was, the direct answer was, ‘He’s got a ways to go.’

“That’s not very encouraging when you hear all this offseason news that he’s working with this quarterback guru, he’s working on his mechanics, he has a second year in Nick Sirianni’s playbook.”

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But it turns out, Gunn wasn’t the only one hearing this.

“This was OTAs when you heard that?” responded Brooks, a former Eagle and Super Bowl champ with the Steelers. “I hate that you told me that, Gunner, and I didn’t want to believe it, but you just told me that verbatim, so that means you’re not lying.”

“So you heard the same thing?” Gunn replied.

“I did. I did.”

The part of the conversation that comes next — the part where Gunn says he wants nothing more than to see Hurts succeed and prove the haters wrong — apparently didn’t make it to Brown, who fired off this tweet in response on Monday morning.

Gunn addressed the original report and the reaction to it, including Brown’s tweet, on Monday’s show. And Brooks expanded on the report, saying he “heard the same thing from a reliable source.” Brooks said he didn’t know if the same source was Gunn’s source, but added more context to his conversation.

“He didn’t have a good day that day,” Brooks quoted the source regarding Hurts.

“He’s definitely improved his mechanics. He improved how he approaches the game. He improved a lot of things going into this season that he’s going to be a much better player than he was before.”

Added Gunn: “I applaud [Brown for sticking up for his teammate], but I’m not going to back down from what I said because I didn’t make it up.

“If I don’t second and third cross-reference it, I don’t put it out there.”

Before going any further, we should probably address a few parts of the tweet from Brown, a longtime friend of Hurts:

This story could end here, with a new receiver going to bat for his quarterback and friend. But it doesn’t. Brown fired off another, somehow better tweet, that sounded like he was trying out for open mic night at Helium.

Not going to lie, this is better than any of my poor attempts at Twitter humor. Plus, he’s showing he knows Philly by getting McNabb-T.O. and Vince Papale references in there. That’s great work, considering he was under 10 when Donovan McNabb and Terrell Owens started beefing, let alone when Papale was playing for the Birds.

But it wasn’t just Brown who went to bat for Hurts. It was also one of the elder statesmen of the team, and someone who is well respected in and out of the Eagles locker room: Lane Johnson.

And that’s not the first time Johnson has publicly supported Hurts recently, showing the amount of respect the young QB has in the locker room.

“He just carries himself with a lot of poise. I mean, he demands respect,” Johnson told MJ Acosta-Ruiz on NFL Total Access. “Just the way he approaches day-to-day activity, how he trains, what he does in the film room. And he’s a great motivator. He’s a great leader. (He’s) super behind the scenes, even during summer, he’s connecting with a lot of the guys. Lot of receivers... I know he’s excited about the new guys that we have that we drafted and acquired over the offseason, and really just getting ready to go to work.”

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Presumably, one of those new guys Johnson mentioned is Brown. Given that he’s already gone to bat for his new QB against the Philly media — and that the two have known each other for some time — the respect is already there.

And that’s good, because as we mentioned training camp hasn’t even started yet. If Brown thinks the takes are hot now, just wait until reporters are charting every throw and overanalyzing every drop. He might want to save a few more Papale zingers for August.