Martellus Bennett Went On A Passionate Rant Trashing The Packers Medical Staff

Martellus Bennett signed a three-year, $21 million deal with the Green Bay Packers last March, just months removed from his Super Bowl LI win as a member of the New England Patriots. Over the course of the last week, Bennett was cut from the Packers under the NFL’s “failure to disclose a physical condition” designation and then subsequently re-signed by the Patriots. If this sounds bizarre to you, you’re not alone.

The NFL’s “failure to disclose a physical condition” designation can be used in a couple of different ways, but in this case, rampant speculation is that the Packers used this designation to try and get back a percentage of Bennett’s signing bonus for failing to disclose a shoulder injury.

According to Packers head coach Mike McCarthy, “the last medical conversation I was involved with in regards to Marty, they were talking about scheduling surgery. After that, then you have the termination and then the claim. I really don’t have any comments on that. I’ve answered the question for the last time, respectfully.”

We can presume that the Packers released Bennett under the assumption that he was going to have surgery, and yet, the Patriots claimed him off waivers, and he practiced with the team on Friday, although the practice report said he was “limited.”

Bennet shared his side of the story in a lengthy string of Instagram posts on Friday. Transcript via The Washington Post:

The Packers examined my shoulder March 10 and cleared it. They even gave me an xray as well. It got worse during the season, specifically against the cowboys so I asked to have it checked and we checked it. After a few days of contemplating to play with it or get surgery, I chose surgery. Now here we are…

They tried to f— over me. Dr. McKenzie trying to cover his own a–. After trying to persuade me to play thru a major injury and me choosing to get surgery.

They have access to all my medical records. My shoulder wasn’t where it is now at the beginning of the season. I f—ed it up playing for the @packers.

Dr. McKenizie didn’t make feel safe and was pushing to play which I thought was weird. Not that he was trying to get me to play thru it but the way he was saying things. I didn’t trust him. So I got 3 other opinions from doctors who all said I need to get it fixed. So I decided to do that. And they decided to waive me with some b——t excuse. Failure disclose.

Every week we do a body evaluation sheet in the weight and pretty much every week I circled my shoulder. I just kept playing but it got worse.

During the bye week I got off anti inflammatories to clean my system and could really feel the pain. So I asked to examine it first day back in. And that’s when we found out it was really f—ed up.

They knew.

They panicked. Thinking that I was trying to go on IR and be on their books next year. When I mentioned that I would possibly retire. So they tried to f— me before they thought I would f— them. This was all about money.

All about money. I get it. But don’t lie homie. You knew wtf was up.

I had intentions of playing all 8 games as I mentioned in the post during the bye week, but found out it was worse than I felt after getting it checked out.

Now I’m like f— it.

I chose my health over the ‘team’. They chose money over me.”

Shortly after Bennett was released, reports started coming out of the Packers’ locker room suggesting that Bennett had quit on the team following Aaron Rodgers’ shoulder injury. The next speculative leap there is that he got himself out of Green Bay as soon as Rodgers went down and on to a new contending team with the New England Patriots.

It’ll be fascinating to see if Bennett plays for the Patriots on Sunday. As of Friday evening, he’s listed as questionable, but as he said in his own words on Instagram, he chose his health over his team. If he suits up for Patriots, though, you know the Packers are going to question that claim.

To make matters more bizarre, multiple current and former Packers came out in support of the Green Bay medical staff in the wake of Bennett’s comments.

It appears as though everyone has a slightly different story here, but one thing is for sure: this is far from over.