Here’s something not to do at work: When the boss calls everyone together for a meeting that will cover ground he has covered many times before, don’t bring a good book to read. Or a bad book to read. Or any book to read.
Former Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett didn’t follow this tip from Michael Scott’s Somehow I Manage. Indeed, Bennett told Greg Bishop of SI.com (and Bishop shared the tale on 710 ESPN in Seattle) that Bennett said he’d read books during team meetings in 2017, because Bennett already had heard the things that coach Pete Carroll was saying.
If you’ve already heard this one before (I hope you’re not reading a book while you’re reading this), there’s a reason for it. Former Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman said in the aftermath of his release that veterans on the team had “kind of heard every story, every funny anecdote” from Carroll, making it easier for players who had been there to tune them out.
Carroll brushed off the criticism, saying, “So what else is new? [Editor’s note: Nothing, apparently.] Sherm has been saying stuff his whole career, so this is nothing different. I’ve been through so much of what he has said, I take it all with a grain of salt. He’s just battling. He’s just trying to figure it out.”
It’s one thing for a guy like Sherman who has heard it all before to sit there quietly and listen to a Pete repeat. It’s another for a guy like Bennett to show open disinterest/defiance by reading books. That’s not the kind of message veteran players should be sending in any setting, since it confuses younger players regarding whether they, too, should have low regard for the things the man supposedly in charge of the locker room is saying (and, in turn, for the man himself).
So, basically, when Bennett suggested last year that he had seen the writing on the wall about his future in Seattle, Bennett himself had helped put it there by paying too much attention to the writing on the pages he was reading instead of giving his head coach the respect and attention he deserved.