HOUSTON — Martellus Bennett interviews are chock full of tangents that have little or nothing to do with football.
One example: During his news conference Wednesday, the New England Patriots tight end somehow found a way to go from explaining how he fit in with the Patriots this season to comparing New England’s 2016 campaign to the works of filmmaker Wes Anderson.
“I think the biggest thing is I just came in, I did my job and I was the same person every single day,” Bennett began. “They know that who I am, this is just who I am. This is what they’re going to get. So I think everyone is like, ‘Oh, that’s just who he is every single day.’ If I don’t tell a joke sometimes, everyone is like, ‘Are you OK?’ If there’s a chance for a joke to happen, I swear the whole team just kind of looks at me waiting for me to say something. And if I don’t say anything, they’re all like, ‘Man, you had the perfect opportunity, but you didn’t say anything.
“I’m kind of like comedic relief. When you watch some movies that are super, super serious, and then there’s this one character that makes the funny lines that make the people laugh. That’s kind of me.”
Bennett said he considers himself a supporting character in the Patriots’ locker room, then launched into a tangent about horror movies.
“If this was a scary movie, I probably got killed in the first scene,” he said. “… Every scary movie, where there’s a black guy, you’ve got to recruit other black people. You’ve got to recruit other black people because the black cast members get killed off first. Your best bet is to have multiple black people to get killed with you, so then your chances of survival go up.
“If you’re the only black guy with a bunch of white friends and you’re outside, someone will be like, ‘Hey, there’s a noise in the basement. Let’s go check it out.’ And I’m like, ‘Man, I don’t think we should do that.’ But they’re like, ‘We should really check it out, dude.” Man, that sounds like a bad idea. They go check it out, and you’re like, ‘I’m not going,’ and then you get killed on the couch.”
When a reporter noted that starting tight end Rob Gronkowski was the one to who went down early this season — landing on injured reserve in early December — Bennett replied: “I know. See, those are plot twists. You didn’t expect that. You’re like, ‘Oh, he made it! I could have sworn the killer was going to get him right there, but he made it! Oh, he’s got to die in this scene. But he doesn’t!’ ”
Bennett cited his occasional injury scares this season as examples of these “plot twists.”
“I get hurt,” he said, “and it looks like I’m going to go down, and it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s in the next scene! He’s still alive!’ And then he saves the day or something like that.”
One reporter then asked Bennett which kind of movie this Patriots season would be — comedy, drama, etc. After pondering for a moment, he gave his answer.
“If this was a movie … I don’t know,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it’s a drama. We did have some dramatic instances over the year. It would probably be like a Wes Anderson film. Very good and beautiful, but at the same time there’s things going on here and there that keep you on edge. And the color palette’s the same — Wes Anderson uses the same color palette in all of his films, which is very interesting. And I love Wes Anderson, too.”
Martellus Bennett, everyone.
Thumbnail photo via Jerry Lai/USA TODAY Sports Images
