The Chicago Bears and Dallas Cowboys will matchup this weekend and while the best tight end on the field has ties to the organization, his name isn’t Jason Witten.
Martellus Bennett is having a pro bowl caliber season, with 65 catches for 737 receiving yards and five touchdowns.
Bennett admitted that he might still be a Cowboy if they would have “allowed him to be himself.”
“I didn’t have room to be myself,” Bennett said. “They always told me, ‘Do it like Witten. Be like Witten.’ I think they had a guy who played tight end the right way and they wanted me to do it exactly like him. But really if you try to imitate someone else, you can never really be who you are. Being a young player coming out of college — turning 21 after the draft and trying to change everything up to be like someone else – that’s just not the way to go in anything in life. Dr. Seuss said, ‘No one can be ‘youer’ than you.’”
Bennett–a free spirit–didn’t like the Cowboys trying to conform him into something he was not.
“As far as maturity goes, I don’t know what that really means as far as what you’re talking about,” Bennett said. “But when I was in Dallas, Jerry Jones always told me I was going to be a Pro Bowl player. He was one of the few people down there who had a lot of faith in me. Even when I left…He didn’t want me to leave. When I went to New York, the deal that I would have had to stay in Dallas would have been better than the one I took in New York. But I just felt where I was in life I needed to move on. But I have a love for Jerry Jones. And a lot of things he told me when I was there, that he believed in me and he thought I was going to be one of the best players… It was one of those things where they had a guy who had a great relationship with the quarterback and the tight end and there just wasn’t enough room for me to fit in and grow. Basically, if you plant a tree in a garage it’s not going to grow much.”
Nothing wrong with studying someone as good as Jason Witten, but Bennett felt the need to be free and while he has had success, he hasn’t had the success and consistent success that Witten has had.