RENTON — Michael Bennett was sharing his wide, varied world again on Thursday.
“I know a lot of the time people look at the NFL and it’s like, ‘Oh, they’ve got women abusers.’ We’ve got some people like that,” the Seahawks’ Pro Bowl defensive end said. “But over the top we’ve got enough good players and enough good people, genuinely, in the NFL,” to affect social change.
Bennett was explaining before he sat out practice to rest for Sunday’s game at Tennessee how he is waiting for his league to do something about his “call to action.” He wants the NFL to formally recognize inequality of minorities and need for police reform nationwide with a month devoted to the causes, like it does for breast-cancer awareness.
“We haven’t gotten any reaction just yet,” Bennett said of a memo the Seahawks’ Pro Bowl defensive end, Malcolm Jenkins and Torrey Smith of the Philadelphia Eagles and Anquan Boldin (formerly of the Buffalo Bills) signed and sent to the league and commissioner Roger Goodell in August. Yahoo! Sports published the 10-page memo Wednesday night.
“Hopefully we will have another meeting in the near future. Hopefully something comes out of it.
“But, it was just a thought of a bunch of players getting together and having some ideas about how we can move forward and be able to impact the communities around the United States and the cities that the NFL teams are in.”
Bennett said a couple of the East Coast-based players co-signing the memo have had a meeting with NFL officials about the players’ issues. He also said “that memo wasn’t supposed to be out. I think that’s a leak; I don’t know how it got out.”
Bennett said he doesn’t mind that it got out, though.
“No, I think it’s important that people see that players are not only being great players, are not only being fathers, are not only being teammates, but also being committed to their communities. Not just in NFL cities, but around the whole United States,” he said. “I think that just shows what type of players and what type of people we’ve got in the league. …
“And I think that’s why it’s going to be a blessing to continuously to have the impact in the communities like that.”
Then, a few minutes later, Bennett was talking about his sack dance.
Last weekend in Seattle’s win over San Francisco, Bennett celebrated a sack by standing tall and raising a gloved fist skyward. He said that was to show solidarity with oppressed people.
But he also said his (in)famous sack dance is not gone.
In the opening loss at Green Bay two weeks ago, Bennett punctuated his first sack of the season with his signature pump of his hips.
A few minutes after that, Bennett talked about how much he’s looking forward to hitting Tennessee quarterback Marcus Mariota on Sunday — because both call Hawaii home. Bennett’s offseason house is in East Honolulu. Mariota, eight years younger than Bennett, was born in Honolulu.
“We hang around the same people in Hawaii and I see him all the time out there,” Bennett said. “He is a really good guy. He does a lot in the community and also he is just a great person. And to be able to see him and watch him in high school and watch him in the NFL has just been an honor to see him win everything. And now he is one of the top quarterbacks.
“I am going to have fun tackling him, obviously. Every time I see him, I’m like ‘Man, I can’t wait!’ And he is like ‘Oh, we aren’t on the schedule this year.’ But I am looking and I’m like ‘Marcus is on the schedule this year!’ So I finally get to hit Marcus.
“I couldn’t do it (when he was in) college (starring at Oregon) because it was illegal for NFL players to go in college and tackle people.”
Bennett then took on why the NFL’s television ratings have continued to decline so far this season — and didn’t see his social activism and sitting during national anthems as a reason.
“We are making more money and commercials are getting more expensive,” Bennett said. “Jay-Z just turned down the (Super Bowl) halftime show; they are going to get bigger superstars.
“What is it, a $9-billion TV deal? Of course people want to say these issues are making ratings go down. But it could be the poor offensive-line play and the poor offensive play in the whole NFL right now that people are just getting turned off at the league. Because nobody watches the game to watch the defense. People want to watch people score touchdowns. …
“So I think people are just getting tuned out of the game and then when you add on the poor offensive-line play around the NFL, it makes it worse.”
Yes, this was all in the same press conference that started with him discussing his latest activism for social equality.
Bennett just about shrugged when asked what he felt the chances were that the league establishes a social-equality awareness month to go with the breast-cancer awareness and military appreciation months the NFL recognizes so visibly in October and November, respectively.
“I don’t know what the chances are,” Bennett said, knowing the politics and public-relations considerations the league undoubtedly would have with his hot-button causes. “Hopefully the chances are 100 percent, but we’ll see.”
Breast cancer is one cause that it is almost incomprehensible anyone would oppose it. Practically speaking, the NFL sees no PR risk in getting behind that, or nearly none in supporting the military — though the league has been criticized for a Senate investigation in 2015 that found NFL teams were charging military organizations for “paid patriotism,” the recognition they’ve gotten at games.
But Bennett has seen and heard the national backlash in the last month to him sitting on the Seahawks’ bench during the national anthem just before games. He says he is doing it to raise awareness of the way minorities are treated in this country. The league has noticed the uproar, too. That makes the social causes Bennett and his fellow players are asking the NFL to recognize with an official month a far trickier and PR-risky proposition for the league.
“Obviously, hopefully, we can get to that point,” Bennett said. “I think the NBA has done a great job of being able to continuously make money and play a great sport, but still be socially aware.
“We have to be able to find that same balance in the NFL: Be able to play great games, give the fans what they want, but also be human beings and talk about the things that effect us, on and off the court. I think that’s what’s going to make us a unique league, on top of all the great players that we have is, what kind of impact can we have in the community, on top of what we do on the field?
Bennett envisions a month in which players and other NFL personnel wear gear at games that represent their social cause of choice.
“It will be like where people can wear different shirts about equality, including gender, race, different issues around the United States that we could bring awareness to, pertaining to different communities around America,” he said.
“We always have different months (commemorating different causes in the NFL), recognizing different issues in America. We feel like that was a big issue, so we wanted to find a way to recognize it and be able to have that conversation where people can find information on things that they want to get involved with. That was the idea.
“It takes a lot for a business or organization to get behind certain issues. We are hoping to keep pushing it to see if we can ever get to that place where we could be comfortable with talking about the issues that are going on around the country.”
Extra points
TE Jimmy Graham (four catches, 9 yards through two games) missed practice for the second consecutive day because of what head coach Pete Carroll has only detailed as an ankle “issue.” Graham’s status for Sunday’s game is iffy, at best. … LB Bobby Wagner (thigh), LG Luke Joeckel (knee) and LB Terence Garvin (shoulder) practiced fully. All missed Tuesday’s practice. … Neiko Thorpe (ankle) missed practice again and may not play Sunday. Fellow special-teams ace D.J. Alexander (hamstring) was a new addition to the injury list. He did not practice.
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