Jalen Hurts praised his all-women management team during the Philadelphia Eagles’ Women’s Football Festival on Sunday, May 19.
“Women are thrusted into positions to have to overcome this, overcome that,” Hurts, 25, said to the crowd, captured in a video shared via Instagram by The Sports-ish. “And they always do. Yet they lack the respect they deserve. I’m here advocating for it. Not only in football but in every situation. We all know the woman is the rock of everything.”
Hurts, a quarterback for the Eagles, has long been an advocate of women in sports and has previously praised his agent, Nicole Lynn, and his all-women management team. “I admire anyone who puts their head down and works for what they want,” Hurts told Sports Illustrated in August 2022. “And I know women who do that daily, but they don’t get the same praise as men — they don’t get the praise that they deserve.”
He added, “I’ve seen that now with tons of different women in my life [who] are hustlers. Athletes, coaches, women in the business world of sports. I see it all the time. And they deserve their flowers too. So if me saying something about it brings more attention to it, then I’m all for that.”
Hurts’ recent comments come in sharp contrast with a commencement address delivered by Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker earlier this month. In his speech, given at the graduation ceremony for Kansas’ Benedictine College on May 11, Butker railed against women in the workforce but also against LGBTQIA+ pride, abortion access and the use of IVF and surrogacy as family planning methods.
Butker further addressed “the ladies present,” congratulating them for their “amazing accomplishment” while claiming that they have had “the most diabolical lies told to [them]” about their place in society.
“Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world,” he said.
Butker went on to bring up his wife, Isabelle, who he said would be “the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.” He also credited her as the reason he is “the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation.”
While Hurts wasn’t directly responding to Butker’s speech, that didn’t stop other stars from voicing their opinions about the kicker’s controversial remarks. Celebrities including Patricia Heaton, Maria Shriver, Whoopi Goldberg and Hoda Kotb — as well as other football players — weighed in on the controversy, either coming to Butker’s defense or denouncing him entirely.
The NFL’s chief diversity officer, Jonathan Beane, released a statement on Wednesday, May 15, sharing that the organization did not agree with Butker’s remarks.
“Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity,” Beane said in a statement to Outsports. “His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”
