Martellus Bennett doesn’t exactly paint Bears QB Jay Cutler as a leader

There’s an unwritten but crucial rule in NFL journalism that has been crystallized in the past few days: If there is a player named Bennett speaking, make sure your recording device is charged, on and running.

After Seattle Seahawks defensive tackle Michael Bennett spoke out about his contract situation (included a phenomenal analogy about marriage) and a million other things, the explosive comments of younger brother Martellus Bennett of the Chicago Bears came to light.

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Among other things, Bennett spewed to Chicago Magazine in an extensive feature on his quarterback, Jay Cutler, essentially questioning the nature of football, the position Cutler plays and leadership. Feast on this quote: 

“Why does everyone always assume the quarterback is the leader?” Bennett asks rhetorically. “Leading the offense and leading the team are two different things. Sometimes I like Cutty, and sometimes I don’t. When I think of a leader, I think, ‘If he started a company, would guys come to work for him?’ There’s a lot of guys on our team who, if they started a business, it’d be, ‘[Expletive] you, I’m gonna go work at McDonald’s.’”

As for the Bears last season, Bennett ripped the rest of his team, too.

data-textannotation-id=”2781fcfd1f8c7eff716f54b806211b9b”>“We had lots of mellow guys,” Bennett said. “You didn’t see a lot of guys running to the pile, helping their teammates up, or having each other’s back. We weren’t a bad team. A bad team is a team that doesn’t have the talent to win. We did. We just sucked. Everybody sucked. Coaches, players, everybody.”

There are other wonderful nuggets in the story, such as Bennett having a dog named Sebastian Janikowski and how he was kicked out of IHOP as a kid for (?!) stealing pancakes, but the comments on Cutler — and a few other members of last season’s Bears, including Marc Trestman — will ring loudest.

Bennett might be outlandish at times, and he might speak some nonsense and live in a headspace few of us can relate to. But it doesn’t mean there might not be some truth to what he said about his team and his quarterback.

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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm