The last remaining sign of A.J. Brown’s rough week was a bright red blotch spreading across the sclera of his right eye, as if a drop of paint had splashed against a tiny canvas. A mysterious illness — could have been food poisoning, could have been a virus — had ruined Brown’s Thanksgiving, had started him vomiting so violently that he lost seven pounds in a single day and a blood vessel in his eye burst.
“It was scary to me when I saw it,” he said late Sunday night. “Ain’t nobody hit me, so it was scary to me.”
He had missed practice days earlier because of the illness, and his stomach finally settled down, he said, only in the second quarter of the Eagles’ 40-33 victory over the Packers. By then, he had lost a fumble for the second time in two weeks, and he had dropped an easy pass from Jalen Hurts, and suddenly the biggest and best acquisition of the Eagles’ offseason, the bona fide No. 1 wide receiver who opens up so much of their offense, was in a bona fide slump.
