AJ Brown’s first interview since the Eagles trade gets into his relationship with Jalen Hurts, and there’s a lot to unpack

AJ Brown spoke publicly for the first time since the Eagles traded him to the New England Patriots on Monday, sitting down with Maria Taylor on the ‘7PM in Brooklyn’ podcast. The interview covered his relationship with Jalen Hurts, why he wanted out, and confirmed at least one thing Eagles fans probably already suspected.

The thing they suspected: there’s a large Patriots rug that has been sitting in Brown’s house for years. Not recently acquired. Not a post-trade purchase. Years, brother.

AJ Brown’s first interview since the Eagles trade, conducted in front of a Patriots rug he’s owned for years:

Eagles fans will not like AJ Brown having a Patriots carpet in his house for years but I think any Eagles fan who made it to the NFL would do the same thing pic.twitter.com/hwLmWYhqNO

— Eliot Shorr-Parks (@EliotShorrParks) June 2, 2026

I mean, what are we doing here? The man was a Patriot in his heart the entire time. He was born and raised a New England fan, ended up in Philly, won a Super Bowl, put up 5,034 yards and 32 touchdowns, and then came home every night and kicked his shoes off onto a Patriots rug. I almost can’t be mad at it. That’s a level of brand loyalty I have to respect.

But the rug is almost a footnote compared to everything else that came out.

On his relationship with Hurts, Brown was measured but not exactly glowing. “Not as close as we once were,” he said, adding that there’s “still a lot of love” but that the friendship had changed since their college days. That’s the first time he’s said it plainly and publicly. Months of subtweets, sideline confrontations, and TMZ reporting about Hurts skipping his wedding, and this is what we got. A dignified answer. No scorched earth. I’d wager most Philly fans respect that more than a Twitter meltdown, even if it doesn’t fully answer the question of what went wrong between them.

Because something did go wrong, Brown didn’t pin it on one moment. ‘I just realized that I felt like my time was up,’ he said, which is a non-answer dressed up as honesty. You don’t feel like your time is up at a place where you’re happy.

There’s also the matter of the massage therapist rumors that have circulated in the background of this whole saga, specifically around Hurts’ inner circle and what Brown did or didn’t know, and when. Brown didn’t address it directly in the interview, and Maria Taylor didn’t push.

That’s fine. It’s the kind of thing that probably never gets addressed directly. But it’s hard to listen to Brown talk about the friendship cooling without thinking about the timeline of when certain things became known, and to whom.

The relationship between Brown and Hurts had clearly changed long before the trade:

Grant, his numbers were still good. The last two years in Philly were productive on paper. But there was a lot of noise attached to them, and it sounds like he was exhausted by it. The reunion with Mike Vrabel, the guy who drafted him out of Ole Miss with the Titans’ second-round pick in 2019, makes all the sense in the world in hindsight. Sometimes you need to go somewhere that feels like a fresh start.

Four years, a Super Bowl ring, and some of the best receiving seasons this franchise has ever seen. If the Patriots rug doesn’t sting a little, nothing will. Good luck, AJ. We’ll see you in Week 6 at Gillette.

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