The last time I saw Michael Bennett, the veteran defensive end who announced his retirement on Tuesday, was three years ago at a rally in Seattle for Charleena Lyles, the 30-year-old Black pregnant woman who was fatally shot by two white Seattle police officers on June 18, 2017. 2017 was also Bennett’s final year with the Seahawks, and though it was the offseason, he wanted to be there to make sure his voice was heard.
..@mosesbread72 speaking out for the memory of Charleena Lyles. "This could have been my family." #SayHerName pic.twitter.com/cNCQ5zk4zo
— Doug Farrar (@NFL_DougFarrar) July 29, 2017
“Retiring feels a little like death of self, but I’m looking forward to the rebirth – the opportunity to reimagine my purpose,” Bennett said on Instagram in his retirement announcement. “I would like to thank my wife and children, who have sacrificed so much for me to succeed. I’m looking forward to supporting them the same way they have me these past 11 years. I have never been more at peace in my life.
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“As the great Toni Morrison said: ‘Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.’“
Bennett has never shied away from using his platform for social justice, and he did so long before the current wave of NFL players who are making their voices heard as never before. He did so when to do so was essentially to put one’s career at risk, and though he did so at a time when his pressure numbers and security from a career perspective were starting to drop made his stances all the more rare. Even after Colin Kaepernick was blackballed from the league following the 2016 season, Bennett maintained his responsibility to speak out when it was necessary to do so.
In a recent interview with Dave Zirin of The Nation, Bennett talked about the recent uprising in athlete awareness — something he helped to ignite. Did he feel vindicated that the things he had been discussing for so long were now the things to talk about?
“Nah, I don’t feel vindicated,” he said. “I’ve been talking about this since I was a kid. The people before me have talked about it. It’s the history of Emmett Till. It’s the history of lynchings and sundown towns. It’s the amount of racial inequality and the racial disparities in America. The perpetual cycle of being over-policed. The perpetual cycle of race. The perpetual cycle of being held down because of skin color.
“Because these issues keep happening, we have this obligation to our history and our humanity to act. We also must act because of our connection to what’s happening in Palestine, the connection to Indigenous people all around the world. It’s the connection to humanity and the intersectionality that leaves me vindicated, because when you stand on the right side of truth, then you don’t have to worry about darkness, because the light is on those issues. One who stands underneath the light is vindicated, anyway it goes.”
So, that was one Michael Bennett — the hyper-intelligent guy who could recite the history of civil rights violations chapter and verse, and had no issue putting his own name on the line to fight what needed to be fought. One suspects that in retirement, he’ll be even more predisposed to address these concerns.
There are other sides of Michael Bennett to remember. In 2015, when I was working for Sports Illustrated, I asked Bennett if he would sit down and watch tape with me, so I could explain how he was one of the NFL’s best pass-rushers. Bennett said that he would, but only if Cliff Avril, his defensive line bookend in Seattle from 2013 through 2017, could join in and explain his own expertise. Bennett said that he wanted Avril involved because Avril didn’t get enough national attention, and that was the only way the thing was going to happen.
So, we did it that way, and it was great. I came away from the experience more knowledgeable in the intricacies of defensive line play, but also admiring Bennett as a teammate — that he would take an opportunity to talk about his own expertise and make it about his friend as well.
So, there’s the Michael Bennett who has spoken out, and there’s the Michael Bennett who wanted his teammate to get as much attention as he did. There’s also the Michael Bennett who was an absolutely unstoppable force at his peak. At 6-foot-4 and (maybe) 275 pounds, Bennett had a unique ability to not only rush off the edge, but to kick inside and disrupt against guards and centers as well. You see it from guys like J.J. Watt and Aaron Donald, but at his apex, Bennett was just about as much of a problem for opposing offensive lines as anyone else in the NFL.
Before Super Bowl XLIX, which pitted the Seahawks against the Patriots, I spoke with then-New England offensive line coach Dave DeGuglielmo about how to stop Bennett in particular.
DeGuglielmo paused, sighed, and said plainly, “We don’t know how to block him.” As a Seattle-based writer, I had every idea just how good Bennett was, but even I was a bit gobsmacked when DeGuglielmo then compared Bennett to… Reggie White.
New England’s inability to block Bennett was proven in the game itself, and Bennett showed his versatility to a ridiculous degree. On New England’s first four offensive plays, Bennett lined up at left end, left tackle, right tackle, and right end, and hurried Tom Brady on three of those plays. The fourth play was a run. Bennett had already established himself as one of the league’s best multi-gap pass-rushers, but this was above and beyond. Bennett didn’t have a sack in the game, but he did generate five quarterback hits, a holding penalty, and he changed the entire structure of New England’s passing game—fearful of Bennett’s mad rush to the pocket, they went with quicker drops and more angular routes.
At any time in the NFL, there are a handful of players who can do what Michael Bennett did on that day, and fewer still who could match that kind of on-field disruption with his kind, unselfish manner, and awareness of the privileges and responsibilities his platform gave him.
Bennett is now onto the post-football chapter of his life, but we should remember how well, and in how many ways, he represented himself during his time in the NFL.