Pagan wrote Wednesday night about Mike Florio being a doofus narc by suggesting that Howie Roseman may have contacted Saquon Barkley illegally before the Eagles signed him to a three-year deal in free agency. The genesis of the allegation was Penn State head coach James Franklin telling reporters that Howie pitched Saquon on staying close to home and reconnecting with Pennsylvania and the Nittany Lion fan base.

Now, for starters, if the Eagles ever found themselves under an NFL tampering investigation, the defense would be easy. “James Franklin is a fraud and you can’t believe anything he says.” Case closed, and we move on.

Florio, being the sniveling weasel that he is, contacted the Eagles, who told him this:

“Through a team spokesman, the Eagles told PFT that all player recruiting is facilitated through the player’s agent.”

With that statement, this should be over and done. If the NFL wants to investigate the Eagles for tampering, then they should investigate the 31 other teams and every NBA, NHL, and MLB franchise as well. Your options are to update the free agency process (and coach hiring process during the playoffs), punish everyone, or look the other way, which is what they normally do, because otherwise they’d be going down a rabbit hole so deep that when you come out the other end, you’re in China.

This stupid thing is the most recent version of Sal Paolantonio wanting to put on his Kenesaw Mountain Landis pants and forensically investigate the Eagles for tanking, which, by the way, was the right strategy, because it got them DeVonta Smith in the draft and into the Super Bowl two years later. Most normal people can take things at face value and move on, realizing that the game is played a certain way and the margins are fudged with regularity, but Sal Pal wanted to be a 65-year-old tattletale, and that’s what Florio is doing now. He just wants to stir shit up and barf out the conspiracy theories that are swirling around in his head.

This is the same Florio who was so obsessed with the Jonathan Gannon story that he posited a hypothetical in which NFL fans put together a class-action lawsuit against the NFL because the “distraction” of the Cardinals pursuing Gannon “undermined the integrity of the Super Bowl.” The same Florio who theorized that the NFL is allowing Lane Johnson to “false start” on purpose to protect quarterbacks. Florio is a guy who can never let anything go and always takes any piece of news and looks for the most conspiratorial angle he can find, then beats it to death. He is equal parts narc, snitch, and sleazy lawyer. Mike Florio was the kid on the playground who ran over to the adult to tell them that Johnny wiped his boogers on his coat. He’s the guy who waved over security during COVID because your mask wasn’t completely covering your nose. It’s the incessant need to call attention to the slightest of possible improprieties, and then have the audacity to say things like “Yes, tampering is rampant when it comes to free agency,” in the PFT writeups.

The worst part about all of this is that you now have New York Giants fans, Amoeba-like with their single brain cells, who are now blathering across social media with demands that the Eagles lose a draft pick or face some related punishment:

Pathetic. Go worry about your own pitiful team. You have no quarterback, no running back, and no offensive line. You’ve got a handful of decent defensive players and a coach who got this group of losers to the playoffs in year #1, now it’s all downhill. You’re disgusting. You little rats.

But anyway, there’s a joke to be made here about Penn State not saying anything for years, then when the coach actually does speak, he gets in trouble. They’re in hot water when they don’t speak and hot water when they do speak. Maybe they shouldn’t have press conferences in Happy Valley at all. Send James Franklin into the film room and tell him to focus on beating Ohio State or Michigan for once.

We are!

…not going to talk about the Eagles anymore.