We ripped Sal Paolantonio Monday afternoon on the site, and deservedly so.

Sal Pal, speaking on Dan Patrick’s national radio show, suggested that the NFL launch a “forensic” investigation into the Eagles and the decision making that culminated in a 20-14 loss to the Washington Football Team. Sal is among the portion of football people who think the Eagles disgraced the NFL by taking steps to lose on purpose and improve their draft positioning instead.

As a refresher, here’s a portion of what Sal had to say on Monday (credit to Eytan Shander for the transcription) –

Alright, look, he’s taking the Joe Judge “we all made sacrifices” stance here, and if Sal wants to have that opinion, that’s perfectly fine. But he crosses a ridiculous line when he calls for the NFL to launch a “forensic investigation,” as if the CSI Miami team is gonna go down to Lincoln Financial Field and do ballistics and blood testing while swabbing noses for DNA samples. They’re gonna look for fingerprints and footprints.

If you’re a regular Philadelphia radio listener, you know Sal Pal does a weekly hit with Mike Missanelli on 97.5 the Fanatic, and he joined the show Tuesday afternoon in what amounted to an incredibly awkward and head-scratching appearance that resulted in him hanging up at the end of the hit.

First, here’s Mike asking Sal to elaborate on his “forensic investigation” take:


 

That was awkward, but I knew we could count on Mike to be on the right side of this debate. He’s generally pragmatic in his approach, and none of his questions were unfair. He was just tossing up soft balls and asking Sal to explain his opinion and suggest an appropriate punishment, and Sal wasn’t able to do either of those things. He just stumbled through the same generic opinion he shared on Dan Patrick’s show, which is a rather damning thing to say, if we’re being honest. If you’re going to accuse someone of tanking and impacting the integrity of the game, and demand that they be investigated for it, then you should be able to support that opinion when challenged.

At the end of the call, after more awkwardness, Sal hung up:

 

This is the equivalent of taking your ball and going home.

Mike asks him totally reasonable questions about his ridiculous opinion to “investigate” the Eagles, Sal has no response, and so he bumbles through a 15-minute radio hit before hanging up on the host.

At the end of the day, you can have any opinion you want, but you should at least be able to explain it. You should be able to back it up. When Sal comes out and says something outrageous like this, and then fails to do either of those things, it makes him no better than Skip Bayless, Max Kellerman, and other national media talking heads.