A.J. Brown said a lot Friday on WIP. Here’s what he got right and what he got wrong.

A.J. Brown didn’t quite bare his soul to WIP-FM (94.1) on Friday afternoon, but he came about as close as most pro athletes do these days. He spent 20 minutes on the phone with Ike Reese and Jack Fritz talking about the Eagles’ lost season, his image, and the media who cover and weigh in on the team. He said a few things that were accurate and a few that weren’t, and the whole schmear got people buzzing about the Eagles more than a month after their season ended. Here’s some of what he got right, what he got wrong, and what needs a bit more context.

(Full-disclosure time: I host a weekly show on WIP, but this is my perspective, nothing more or less. I’m speaking for myself and no one else.)

Quote 1: “What’s the deal? You guys are supposed to be supporting Philly, but it [doesn’t] turn out to be that. Why make up so many rumors?”

There’s a lot going on in those three sentences, starting with Brown’s presumption that the job of at least some media members is to cheerlead for the Eagles and the other teams in town. Plenty of them do exactly that — pay close attention to local TV anchors’ attire during the next Phillies “Red October” — and many more base their coverage, analysis, or commentary on a kind of civic loyalty and soft fandom. Hey, come on. Be honest. In the end, we’re all on the same page here. Everybody wants the Eagles to do well.

» READ MORE: If Nick Sirianni wants to save his career as the Eagles’ coach, he needs to learn to calm down

Wrong. Some of us never lose a wink of sleep over the final score of an Eagles game. Some of us view covering sports through a similar lens to those who cover City Hall or a local crime beat or the Philly restaurant scene. We’re trying to tell people what’s happening, why it’s happening, and in certain cases what we think. We’re not rooting for a particular outcome, and we’re not trying to tailor our coverage to achieve a particular outcome. Advocacy/Activism/Homerism and good, reliable journalism are, at their core, inherently at odds.

As for Brown’s assertion that WIP is fabricating rumors, my guess is that he was referring to a poll question that the station posted on X/Twitter asking whether the Eagles should trade him for cornerback Patrick Surtain. The question itself is an example of the quasi-barroom conversation that is a staple of sports-talk. The problem is that 1) the question is ridiculous — the Eagles don’t want to trade Brown and, because his salary-cap hit would be so high, pretty much can’t trade him; and 2) once it was dropped into the mouth of the social-media machine, this total hypothetical became reconstituted into a genuine trade rumor, which it never was.

Quote 2: “You guys are our biggest haters, like we’ve got to prove to the media — not necessarily your radio show, but the media — that we can play ball and meet the standard. It shouldn’t be like that. I’ve never dealt with nothing like that.”

This is a battle that Brown is never going to win, and as I’ve written before, he should log off his social-media accounts and stop fighting it. He seems to view “the media” in the same way that the average American does: Anyone who is on TV or writes for a website or has a relatively large audience is in “the media,” and most people don’t differentiate among the various roles or jobs within the industry.

Stephen A. Smith; Jimmy Kimmel; Jeff McLane; a foreign correspondent for The New York Times; Oprah Winfrey; the hosts at WIP; Craig Carton; a Twitter aggregator with 300,000 followers; Rachel Maddow; Greg Cosell breaking down film; Pat McAfee in his tank top: They’re all “the media.” Good luck getting all of them to be conscientious and reasonable and fair or to see things your way.

» READ MORE: The Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade turned into an atrocity. Don’t think it couldn’t happen here.

Also, if Brown thinks WIP is rough on the city’s athletes now, he should familiarize himself with the station’s history. It was tougher, more negative, and often much more toxic years ago.

Quote 3: “I think the media kind of ran with ‘It’s the coaches. It’s the coaches’ fault. The coaches didn’t prepare us’ and this and that. I never blamed the coaches. I’m not the person to blame the coaches. I’m not trying to blame anyone. I’m the guy who’s going to look in the mirror and go challenge everybody else. It was the players not executing and that’s what happened.”

Here’s the thing, A.J. Based on every indication we have so far, you know who blamed the coaches? Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman. The Eagles wouldn’t have a new offensive coordinator, a new defensive coordinator, and seven other new staffers under Nick Sirianni if Lurie and Roseman didn’t feel that way.

Quote 4: “I feel like we feel like we gave you the answer, and people didn’t want to just accept the answer. That’s all right, too. It just doesn’t make sense.”

It makes perfect sense, actually. The last thing any reporter covering any entity or institution should do is simply accept an answer or explanation at face value. Skepticism is your default position, or should be. Reporting reveals the reality.

Quote 5: “No matter what I say, you guys will make a story anyway and pinpoint it how you want to pinpoint it. It was turned into a fact because it was turned into ‘A.J. is upset at the Eagles,’ not ‘The Eagles are upset.’ No, it was A.J., and it was always that narrative. I didn’t want to do my teammates like that. I thought at the time not talking was the best thing for the team because I didn’t want to compound a negative with a negative.”

I believed then and believe now that Brown was acting in good faith by not speaking to the media after a couple of the Eagles’ losses, that he wasn’t trying to be a troublemaker. I don’t have any issue with his decision. But someone else might disagree. Someone else might believe Brown should have talked. And there’s nothing wrong with someone else believing that.