Michael Bennett made an unscheduled appearance on 710 ESPN Seattle Thursday, making his first public comments of the offseason, and as is almost always the case with the Seahawks’ defensive end, Bennett had some interesting things to say.
Two topics in particular that involve Bennett have come up this offseason, the first being a report that he is looking for a new contract and a trade to Atlanta, and the second being his relationship with newly acquired Seahawks tight end Jimmy Graham, whom Bennett called soft and overrated during the 2013 season.
On the report of Bennett seeking a trade, which came from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram last month, Bennett said, “I don’t know what the problem is. I’m still trying to figure out what happened.
Bennett noted it was strange that somebody in Dallas was reporting news on him, and said he was surfing with his kids in Hawaii when that story came out.
“I didn’t ask for a trade,” he said.
And Bennett being Bennett, he also had an entertaining way to dismiss trade rumors, saying, “They made rumors about Jesus, they’ll make rumors about anybody.”
The other part of that report was that Bennett wanted a trade because he was seeking a new contract just a year after signing a four-year deal to stay in Seattle. Bennett was not specifically asked about his contract, so it is entirely possible that while he didn’t ask for a trade, he would still like a raise. The Seahawks have repeatedly made it clear the don’t want to set a precedent by renegotiating deals until that player is heading into the last year of his contract—it’s why Marshawn Lynch didn’t get a new contract last summer when he held out of training camp—so even if Bennett wants a new deal, he’s not likely going to get one.
As for Bennett’s new teammate, he didn’t exactly back down from the critical words he has said about Graham in the past.
“I still feel the same way,” Bennett said. “Just because he’s on my team, I don’t stop feeling that way. Obviously I’m going to be a better teammate to him because he’s on my team. I can’t do the things I was doing to him when we were playing him.”
Bennett added that because the Seahawks play a different style of football than the Saints, Graham will have to adjust to the way Seattle does things.
“When he comes to our team, he’s a part of our team,” Bennett said. “We had a different philosophy than they had with the Saints, so the things he was expected to do with the Saints are going to be different when he comes here. Obviously we’re a running team, so he’s going to have to block and do all those things. I don’t feel as harsh as I did at the time because he’s my teammate now, but at the time he was on the opposite team, a team we played that was pretty good, we battled with them a couple of times, and I didn’t really like that team.”
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