Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz said he doesn't know why a recent Philadelphia newspaper report labeled him "selfish" and "egotistical."
Wentz's teammates defended him in the days following the Jan. 21 story in the Philly Voice. He recently met with reporters for the first time since then and admitted "I can be selfish," but Wentz said everyone has that tendency at times.
"I just read it and I was a little confused, I guess," he added (via Philly.com). "I know who I am, first of all. 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.
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"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. But, again, I don’t know how that all happened and everything with that."
Wentz asked himself several questions after reading the report.
"If someone did have this perception of me, why? What have I done wrong? What can I get better at?" he said. "I realize I have my shortcomings. Yes, I can be selfish. I think we all have selfishness inside of us. There’s human elements to that, that I really look at and say, ‘Well, I can get better.’ I always say I can be better on the field, off the field, how I carry myself."
Wentz was sidelined by a back fracture and missed the final three regular season games and the Eagles' playoff games against the Bears and Saints. He watched as backup Nick Foles led the team to four victories in those five games. A similar situation unfolded in 2017 after Wentz tore his ACL, Foles stepped in to lead the Eagles to a victory in Super Bowl 52.
Despite Foles' late-season heroics the past two seasons, coach Doug Pederson is sticking with Wentz as the starter in 2019. The Philly Voice report last month suggested Wentz was playing in Foles' shadow, saying Foles is “universally loved" in the Eagles locker room.
Wentz dismissed any notion of playing in a shadow.
"it’s something there’s nothing you can do about it," he said. "For one, I love Nick. Nick and I are great friends and strong believers and we have the same values and everything. We’ll be the first to say that we are different.
"That so-called shadow or whatever you want to call it, I can’t let that bother me. I know what I’m capable of on the field. I know what I’ve done in the past, and I know where I envision this team going. And so, I don’t really worry about what’s happened in the past — the shadow, the pressure, the stress. There’s plenty of it. Whether that’s from living in quote, 'that shadow' or whatever, there’s plenty of stress and pressure here that you try and block out as much as you can.”
Wentz admitted he wonders about the source of the story.
“Initially I’m like trying to figure out who could it have been," Wentz said. "In your mind you play detective. But then you’re like, ‘Does it really matter?'"