How about this on a Monday morning?

I did not expect Carson Wentz to address the Joe Santoliquito column that turned Philadelphia upside down a few weeks ago, the story citing anonymous locker room sources that painted the Eagles quarterback as an “uncompromising” guy who was responsible for the mid-season offensive struggles.

The Birds brought in a few beat reporters recently to sit down with Carson and talk about the article. It was embargoed until Monday morning, which is why the various stories all came out at the crack of dawn on the day after the Super Bowl.

Here’s who wrote about the meeting:

  • Zach Berman (Philadelphia Inquirer)
  • Jeff McLane (Philadelphia Inquirer)
  • Reuben Frank (NBC Sports Philadelphia)
  • Dave Zangaro (NBC Sports Philadelphia)
  • Sheil Kapadia (The Athletic)
  • Tim McManus (ESPN)

I don’t know if that means all of those guys were physically there. For instance, Roob could have given his audio to Zangaro to write two stories instead of one, or vice versa. McLane was in Atlanta for the Super Bowl, so yeah, I dunno.

But Santoliquito was obviously not there, and Jimmy Kempski was not invited, though I think he should have been.  The setup was described as Wentz “speaking to a handful of reporters during an interview that lasted about 23 minutes,” according to Kapadia. It’s worth noting that Wentz was not available for an entire month before speaking to media in the Eagles locker room on the day after the Saints loss.

There are a lot of quotes from the various articles, but the overall takeaway was that Wentz disputed some of the specific things in the piece while admitting that he certainly is not perfect and has a number of flaws. He didn’t outright dismiss the story, which I found interesting.

This passage from Berman’s story jumped out to me:

“It hasn’t been the easiest last year for me on the physical level, just battling the injuries, but then just personally going through it, sitting on the sideline and then playing and then sitting on the sideline again,” Wentz said in a wide-ranging interview. “So I realize I maybe wasn’t the greatest teammate at times because I was emotionally kind of all over the place. To the outside world, I probably didn’t show it much. But internally, you’re definitely fighting some sort of emotions. … So there’s things to learn just about how to handle myself in certain situations.”

In his first public comments since that report, Wentz disputed specific examples that were cited by PhillyVoice.com and denied that he was the cause of friction on the team. However, Wentz did not refute certain characterizations from the story.

“I know who I am, first of all,” Wentz said. “I know how I carry myself, I know I’m not perfect, I know I have flaws. So I’m not going to sit here and say it was inaccurate and completely made up, I’m not going to do that. But at the end of the day, I will say our locker room is really close. If there were guys that had issues, in hindsight, I wish we could have just talked about them.

Wentz did, however, directly dispute some of the specific claims made in the Santoliquito piece, after the jump.

Via The Athletic:

“The fact of bullying Mike Groh … Groh and I talked to each other that day when it came out, and I think we all know that never took place,” Wentz said. “I even go back to the year before with Frank (Reich), I know Frank has gone and said that he and I used to have these competitive arguments, but they’re healthy. That stuff happens. That’s, I think, what good football teams have, the ability to respectfully do that and be stubborn and those things. It was the same way with Groh. In my opinion, he is a very good football mind and in my opinion I feel like I have something to contribute too, so I thought we had some really healthy dialogue. To say, quote ‘bullied him’ I’d say that’s kind of disrespectful to Groh. I don’t think anyone bullies coach Groh. And then B, I think we have a great relationship and it’s just going to keep getting better. That line, I was kind of blown away with what that would have meant.

“And then the idea of running Foles’ stuff, we both see the game differently to some extent. But to say I was resistant to running his stuff and then vice versa, there’s so many things to the X’s and O’s of the game, to just say a blanket statement like that just doesn’t necessarily do it justice. We both like different concepts but overall we’re running similar stuff. And we kind of base it off of, what’s the defense giving us … it’s such a blanket statement that there’s too many intricacies to that that don’t necessarily apply.”

It’s a pretty fascinating read.

ESPN and NBC Sports Philadelphia both transcribed the entire god damn thing, so if you want to read straight through it, click this link.