Tight end Martellus Bennett is back with the Patriots after being waived by the Packers this week, but he’s not done talking about what led to his departure from Green Bay nine weeks into a multi-year deal.
Bennett was waived with a failure to disclose injury designation related to the shoulder injury that kept him out of the lineup last weekend and was set to have him on Green Bay’s inactive list again this week. In a series of posts to his Instagram stories, Bennett took issue with the Packers’ claim and with the care he received from team doctor Patrick McKenzie.
Bennett wrote that the team examined his shoulder when he signed and cleared it and that things got worse as the season went along. He said he circled his shoulder “pretty much” every week when given a body evaluation sheet by the team and that the pain got worse when he stopped taking anti-inflammatories during the bye in Week Eight. Upon returning to the team, he asked for an evaluation “and that’s when we found out it was really f–ed up.”
“Dr. McKenzie didn’t make [me] feel safe and was pushing to play which I thought was weird,” Bennett wrote. “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 three 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 bulls–t excuse.”
Bennett reportedly has a torn rotator cuff, but was at Patriots practice and there’s no sign that he failed a physical with the team or is set to have surgery. He did not discuss that apparent change of heart, which may be as simple as deciding to play through an injury on an offense with Tom Brady rather than one with Brett Hundley.