Sources: Ravens held Cam Jurgens physical before trade with Eagles
Before the trade went public, the Ravens quietly put Cam Jurgens through a physical in Philadelphia, a lesson learned from the failed Maxx Crosby deal.
Why Cam Jurgens' physical is trending
People are searching this because of how the Jurgens trade got done, not just that it got done. According to ESPN, before the Ravens and Eagles finalized sending Jurgens to Baltimore, the two sides agreed to put him through a physical first, in Philadelphia, before anything became official. That is backwards from how most NFL trades work. Normally a trade is announced pending physical, and the player travels to his new team to get checked out afterward. Here the checking happened first, quietly, before the public ever saw the trade.
What is known: ESPN's sources say the Ravens sent their chief medical officer and head trainer to the Eagles' training facility on a Wednesday morning. Jurgens, who is still in concussion protocol and had back surgery in 2025, went through the physical in a quiet part of the building, according to the report, without most of the Eagles organization noticing. The Ravens came away satisfied, and the trade was announced a short time later.
What is not known: ESPN's report does not detail exactly what the physical covered beyond the concussion protocol and the 2025 back surgery, or how long the exam ran.
What happens next: Jurgens will not make his Ravens debut Sunday night against the Falcons. His first game in Baltimore is expected the following week, when the Ravens play at Cleveland, per the report.
The Maxx Crosby physical that changed the playbook
This approach exists because of what happened with Maxx Crosby back in March. The Ravens had agreed to send two first-round picks to the Raiders for Crosby on a Friday night, and he flew to Baltimore the following week expecting to finalize things. He failed his physical, and the trade was voided. Nobody involved, not the Raiders, the Ravens or Crosby himself, came out of that looking good, according to ESPN's sources.
Those same sources told ESPN that teams around the league took note of how that deal fell apart and started weighing whether trades needed to be structured differently going forward.
What it means for future trades
The Jurgens deal was the Ravens' first trade since that scrapped Crosby trade in March, according to ESPN's report. This time, instead of waiting until after an announcement to put a player through medical review, the Ravens and Eagles built the physical into the front end of the process. The trade was not made pending physical, since the physical had already happened and the results were already in hand.
Sources told ESPN that other teams noticed how smoothly it went, and it is possible clubs deep in advanced trade talks start requesting physicals before any deal is finalized rather than after. Whether that becomes standard practice league-wide is not something ESPN's report settles, but the framework is now out there for other front offices to copy.
Facts per ESPN. Opinion is the taproom's.