The injury situation surrounding Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts has sparked a candid comment from former Cleveland Browns QB Brady Quinn. Hurts is dealing with a blood clot that he played through in London against the Jacksonville Jaguars a couple of weeks back. That has Quinn looking back at his own experience with team doctors in Cleveland.

Quinn was a first-round pick out of Notre Dame by the Browns in the 2007 NFL Draft. He fizzled out as Cleveland’s quarterback after three seasons with the team. The Browns then traded him to the Denver Broncos in exchange for Peyton Hillis and draft picks.

Some have suggested the Eagles gave Hurts bad medical advice by letting him play in the London game. Quinn says he went through something similar during his time in Cleveland, in terms of getting bad a medical recommendation. 

Brady Quinn opens up about his time with the Browns

Quinn spoke about his experience with the Browns’ medical staff on the Two Pros and a Cup of Joe podcast. He didn’t hold back about how his injury was handled before the trade to Denver.

“I’ve gotten bad medical advice. The Cleveland Browns gave me terrible medical advice,” Quinn stated. “They literally told me not to have surgery on a Lisfranc injury, and then traded me. Do you think that trade would have happened had I been recovering from surgery? Absolutely not. I got to Denver. Their staff looked at me and goes, “You probably should have surgery. That would have been our advice to you”, or that would have been what, we would have probably went down that road. 

“But let’s just rehab it the best we can. Now, you’ve got to deal with it. So I dealt with that for the next four or five years of my career, knowing that I needed time to go get surgery, but not ever really being a point in my career to have time to get surgery. So, like case in point, like that’s just not how it works. They’ll give medical opinions, but it’s a sliding scale.”

Quinn is pointing out that team medical staffs work for the teams. Because of that, their advice is going to favor the team’s best interest over the player’s. It’s a business at the end of the day, and Quinn believes he paid the price for it.

Quinn’s career never took off after leaving Cleveland

The Browns traded Quinn to the Broncos in 2010, and he never appeared in a game for Denver. He served as a backup during his time there instead.

His next appearance after the 2009 season didn’t come until he landed with the Kansas City Chiefs in 2012. Quinn started eight games for Kansas City and went 1-7 in those starts. He threw for 1,141 passing yards, two touchdown passes, and eight interceptions.

Quinn’s career never got going after that stretch. He has since moved into the sports media landscape. Quinn lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he’s originally from, and he played his high school football at Dublin Coffman.

Quinn sharing these details now, years after the fact, lines up with the Hurts situation in Philadelphia. It also raises a fair question about his own career path. Had Quinn been able to get surgery on that Lisfranc injury when he first suffered it, would his career have been any different? That’s something nobody will ever know for sure, but Quinn clearly still thinks about it.