HOUSTON—Where do you want to start with Martellus Bennett? How about space? The New England Patriots tight end has been wearing a NASA hat all week. He likes to talk. OK, space.
“I think the possibility of being in space was something that, as a kid, really drew me in,” says the perpetually cheerful Bennett. “Because we really don’t know what’s out there. We don’t even really know if they landed on the moon. Sorry, NASA. We don’t know if they really landed on the moon.
“It’s just like anything in life. When you have to deal with the unknown, it’s scary. It’s easier to deal with things that you know.”
The Patriots are known. Bill Belichick was once said to bring newspaper clippings into meetings and read out quotes from players that displeased him, delivered dry. The Patriots are notorious for discipline and secrecy. Players watch what they say because of Bill, and as Tom Brady says, “we don’t want to disappoint him.”
When Bennett got to the Patriots from Chicago, Belichick would lead a meeting and Bennett, like everyone else, thought he was so smart. But also, funny. Sometimes Bennett would burst out laughing, and then look around.
“And no one else would be laughing, and I’d be like, ‘How are you guys not laughing?’ ” Bennett says. “That’s the funniest s— I heard all day. There’s times the whole room will laugh, and that means I can laugh more. But there’s times where he says something and I’m like, he’s so smart and so funny at the same time, but his humour might go over people’s heads. You’ve just got to be there. It’s like Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
But it was fine, because Bennett did the work. He loves studying the game because as he puts it, it’s pieces — guys having to be in the right place, and he usually is. In New England, he has found his right place.
“We had no idea, because we played against Martellus Bennett on the Bears, and he wears this black visor, and he’s 6-6, and he’s tatted up, and that’s a mean dude,” Patriots cornerback Logan Ryan says. “And he comes in the locker room and he’s like, ‘I’m Marty,’ first day, shaking our hands.
“I think there are a lot of misconceptions. You’re still allowed to be yourself. And Marty is always going to shine . . . it’s just about not speaking for others. Speak for yourself. And I think that’s the thing that I’ve learned here. And I don’t think Marty makes a lot of bold statements for other people. I think he kind of sticks to being Marty, and talks about the million things that Marty does, and Marty as the chef and author and animator and illustrator and comedian and musician.”
“I didn’t realize he had an iTunes album. We didn’t take him seriously. He showed us.”
Bennett told them he made music, and they didn’t believe him, and he played the music. He said he had skydived, and they didn’t believe him, and he showed them pictures. There’s his production company, with his brother Michael, of the Seattle Seahawks. And his children’s books. And everything.
“I’m like the dad on Big Fish,” says Bennett, referring to the 2003 Tim Burton film. “I tell all these stories, and some of them might be a little bit bigger than they really are, but at the end of the day, they’re true.”
He is a delight. Asked if his childhood touch football in his Houston hometown helped bring him here, he says, cheerfully, “No, all that s— I did as a kid doesn’t really matter.” Asked about hanging out with teammate Julian Edelman, he says, “Most of the time he’s trying to steal my ideas, creatively.” Asked about how he fits in, he heads back into movies.
“The biggest thing is I just came in and did my job, and I’m the same person every single day. They know this is who I am, this is what they’re going to get. So if I don’t tell a joke, everybody’s like, is he OK? If there’s a chance for a joke to happen, I swear the whole team looks at me, waiting for me to say something. So I’m kind of like comedic relief. If this was a scary movie, I probably would have been killed in the first scene. Because, I mean, there’s rules for scary movies.
“Most scary movies, if you want to be in a scary movie as a black guy, you’ve got to recruit other black people because the black cast member’s going to get killed off first. So your best bet is to have multiple black people in the film with you, because then your chances of survival goes up.”
He’s not just a clown. He was the one who said on Opening Night he wouldn’t visit a Trump White House, because he didn’t support the man inside. He said too many players are focused on personal brands, and that too many aren’t role models. He wants to be a voice for people who look like him and don’t have a voice. He says, “I want to do things to make people laugh, and take them on great adventures.”
He wants to change the world. If you hated the Patriots for winning or cheating or the Trump thing, Martellus Bennett is an effective counterpoint.
“There’s not a lot of places I don’t fit in, as a human being, as a person,” Bennett says. “But here’s a place where I didn’t even have to try to fit it. I didn’t have to try to do anything.”
Anyway, back to space. His favourite space movies are either Galaxy Quest or Spaceballs, but he brings up E.T., about the kid and the alien. He has a theory.
“I tried watching it with my daughter, and . . . the great thing to me is E.T. wasn’t a space movie,” says Bennett. “E.T. is really about empathy. And the reason it’s about empathy is at the beginning of the movie . . . in the first scene you see Elliott’s brother come down the stairs, and he says, ‘You’re so selfish, all you do is care about yourself, why don’t you put yourself in someone else’s shoes for a change?’
“And this kid who only thought about himself, he was literally put into the shoes of E.T. So everything that E.T. felt, Elliott felt. And so he cared. So it was very interesting.”
He pauses. He thinks about it.
“I don’t know, I could be wrong. I’m wrong a lot.”
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