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On 94 WIP, Joe Santoliquito Says He’s “The Best Thing Carson Wentz Has Ever Had Going For Him”
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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware of the Philly Voice story published Monday, penned by Joe Santoliquito, titled “Exclusive: Sources inside Eagles paint Carson Wentz as ‘selfish,’ ‘uncompromising’ and ‘playing favorites'”.
We reacted to this story ad nauseum yesterday and shared the reactions of Eagles players who came to Carson’s defense in disputing the claims made by anonymous sources.
Later in the day, Santoliquito went on the WIP afternoon show with Jon Marks and Rob Ellis to talk about his report. This morning, he was back on WIP, this time live in the studio with my favorite Philadelphia radio host, Angelo Cataldi.
There’s a lot to parse, and it’s sort of a free-flowing conversation, so I’ll just jot down a few notes:
- Joe started by repeating what he said Monday, which was that the story began with an “innocuous question” about Mike Groh and whether the offensive coordinator was responsible for the struggles in that phase of the game.
- He said he’s received death threats: “So far death threats three, offers to commit suicide one. Yeah, one with my address attached to it.”
This line sounds a bit ridiculous, if we’re being honest:
“The other thing too is, guess what? I’m the best thing Carson Wentz has ever had going for him. You don’t think this is gonna piss him off even more? You don’t think this is gonna motivate him even more, to stick this up someone’s little tail and just say, ‘Hey listen pal, you’re wrong. Everybody else that believes what you said you wrote was wrong.’ I can see it now. I can see Jason Kelce in his mummer’s outfit calling me out like he called out Lombardi last year. If the Eagles turn around and have a 14-2 season, make a run, who knows? Who knows that this very – well I’m not going to say very negative – situation that has been brought to light, they can’t turn into a positive. And I feel very strongly about that.”
More notes, after the jump:
- Joe got into more detail about the Groh stuff, alleging that Wentz was held more in check when Frank Reich and John DeFilippo
- Al Morganti seemed annoyed by the whole thing and challenged him on multiple things in the story.
There was also a response from Santoliquito to his confirmation, via a Marcus Hayes Inquirer response, that he did not tell the Eagles about the story until 40 minutes before it was published:
“I’ll say this, in putting this together, the mistake that I’ll admit is not giving the Eagles ample notice. Now, I called them 8:20 a.m. on Monday and the story came out at nine…. But I will say this and you saw this, his agent was contacted. The office was contacted two weeks ago, never got a reply. Finally at ten o’clock last night, and you saw the text, that the individual got back to me.”
Coggin was really annoyed by this. Typically you give the team time to respond to something, to put together a formal response and allow them to share their side of the story, if there’s a side at all. Obviously you’re not going to get much beyond something like this: “we dispute the claims made in the story, Carson is a good guy, blah blah blah.” But the point is that you’re being fair and attempting to get both sides involved, to go through the standard operating procedure and get the club PR staff involved and allow Carson to say his piece.
Angelo also had Dave Spadaro on to share his reaction, which is pointless. Spadaro is a team employee. What the fuck do you expect him to say? That he enjoyed the article? Please. Stop putting Spadaro on radio and TV and asking him for his opinion, because he can only take one side. That’s the nature of his job.
Anyway, there’s a lot of stuff in here, but if I’m Joe, I’d just double down and back the article I wrote. It sounds like he’s stretching a bit to defend himself. If you believe in your reporting, you shouldn’t have to do a pair of WIP appearances and talk to a competing news outlet to justify your work.
All of the audio is below. Knock yourself out:
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com