Former Green Bay Packers tight end Martellus Bennett unleashed a series of tweets this past Saturday, Oct. 23, detailing the incidents he said led to his brief stint with the team in 2017.
The tweets are pretty damning, alleging collusion as well as death threats received by the former Pro Bowl player over his national anthem protests.
Packers fans were sending hate mail and leaving death threats and other hateful messages on the team voicemail because I was protesting. It got so bad that Doug Collins the head of team security was worried something might happen to me in Wisconsin.
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 23, 2021
Bennett signed a three-year $21 million dollar contract in March of 2017, and was waived by the Packers Packers after only seven games on Nov. 8, 2017, citing a failure to disclose a medical condition designation.
According to Bennett’s Twitter thread, he was released because of his protest against racial injustice during the national anthem and the influence he had over the young Black players in the locker room.
Ask Doug Collins. Head of Packers security. Don't believe the smear campaign the packers organized when they cut me
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 23, 2021
Doug told me Wisconsin wasn't the place for protesting and offered me a bunch of alternatives. Even holding hands and the flag with cops before the seahawks game. I told em nah.
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 23, 2021
The NFL should have no credibility with its fans or the public whenever a player makes accusations like this. The league, its owners, and franchises have a long and sordid history of being racist at best, and downright insidious, abhorrent, and intentional at worst.
You don’t even need to go back any further than the last few years. The Colin Kaepernick situation, the league using race norming to cheat Black players out of benefits, the awful minority hiring record. The NFL’s transgressions are so lengthy, you could devote thousands of pages.
What’s particularly egregious about Bennett’s situation, is the length the Packers go to in the name of protecting and coddling their racist fans. It borders on collusion.
Bennett alleges that team physician Dr. McKenzie and the higher-ups used an injury Bennett suffered as a loophole to get rid of him.
I was supposed to go on ir 2 weeks before I was cut but they needed to come up with a plan to get rid of me with their lawyers.
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 23, 2021
The team looked for some of loophole to get rid of me. And this is why Dr. McKenzie will always be a bitch to me. And a liar.
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 23, 2021
As proof, Bennett says he won his lawsuit against the Packers when they tried to recoup his signing bonus. A common practice of NFL teams for breach of contract.
If I was lying how'd I win the lawsuit the team had against me in the court of law when they came after my signing bonus. Packers fans have been believing and spreading false information about me for 4 years now.
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 23, 2021
Everyone remembers the firestorm of the national anthem protests. Fans loudly booed players for doing anything but standing in deference during the playing of the national anthem.
That was before the NFL’s bumbling of its idea to play the Black national anthem before games this season, after a year of paying lip service to Black Lives Matter and social justice causes.
Former president Donald Trump even used the anthem protests as a dog whistle for his radical base and their anti-Black sentiments. Is it so strange to think Bennett would receive death threats?
Yea I call packers fans racist because I've seen it first hand and heard with my own ears. Doug Collins and Flea played me the messages.
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 23, 2021
In fact the entire situation to get me out of Green Bay was tied to protesting and the organization plotted to find a way to cut me and came up with some bullshit lol.
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 23, 2021
They had a players meeting in which the GM etc met with me Jordy Nelson, Crosby Aaron and some other guys shot what should be done. I didn't agree with those guys about their ideas for protest. It was some corny ass shit.
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 23, 2021
I ended up writing the team letter about the protest on behalf of the players on the team that was released. Which I had to water down because Jordy and a couple of guys couldn't relate to what I was saying.
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 23, 2021
Football locker rooms, like much of America, are made up of disparate groups. Much like America, those in positions of privilege don’t bother to listen or understand where others are coming from. The move is always to find a quick solution.
But when has that ever worked?
We have over 450 years of evidence of the lengths to which people go to using power to maintain a system of white supremacy. The NFL is no different. It is a microcosm of the larger society of which it inhabits.
The packers know what they did. I have all the details in my notebook starting in March of that year I started keeping a journal of all the fuck shit that teams and coaches said and did after my time with the cowboys.
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 23, 2021
The influence I had over the young black players in the packers when it came to protesting and speaking out was an issue the packers weren't prepared for. I told the young guys they didn't need to protest. I had a long heart to heart with Kevin king because he was nervous.
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 23, 2021
And scared of what the team may do to him. He decided to join me at the very last moment before the national anthem.
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 23, 2021
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. Maybe Martellus Bennett’s Twitter thread is more of the same. What do we expect this bit of information to do in the larger context of how franchises operate?
Perhaps this is part of a larger plan to expose more dirt. But, it seems as though there’s no shortage of that these days. We all know the ills of NFL, and before the end of this current season, there is likely to be something else damning that comes out.
Hopefully this isn’t all becoming white noise that lasts for a brief moment before something else fills the void.
