The New England Patriots acquired tight end Martellus Bennett from the Chicago Bears and there's a chance Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski played a role in the transactions.
The Ringer's Bill Simmons hosted NFL insider Jay Glazer on his podcast and the two talked about the Patriots, the NFL, and his UFC training.
Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski works out with Glazer, as does new tight end Martellus Bennett, and that connection could have played a role in the Patriots acquisition. Glazer noted that there were two other teams interested in acquiring Bennett.
"When you saw the two of them together," Glazer told Simmons. "You're like how the hell is anyone going to stop these guys?"
"Martellus, early on, he's kind of talking and yapping, talking and yapping," Glazer continued. "And we look at this guy and I'm going, how the hell does this guy not make more Pro Bowls? and then I realize he just talks so much.
"But we put our hands on him so much [with Mixed Martial Arts training], he's like 'why you guys keep doing this to me?' We're like, 'well you're the only dipshit who keeps talking!'
"Once he kind of got into the flow, he was all in. It's funny because I talked to the Bears before they traded him and they said, 'oh my gosh, is he really doing that well?' I said, 'he's a different guy than the guy I knew who's always screwing around, having fun. He's in now.'"
Bennett picked up a reputation of a player that struggled to fit into the structure of his team, with Glazer calling him "diva-ish." Glazer seems hopeful that Bennett's experience with the mixed martial arts training will lead to a new outlook at buying into a system, and Glazer seems to think that Gronkowski was impressed with how Bennett was working out, before the two became teammates.
"Gronk was like, 'okay I'm think I'm in with this,'" Glazer said. "I don't know if he called back there [to New England] and said, hey this guy is doing great or what, but you can see the two of them, they're both over 6'6, they're both in the 260, 270 range. It's absolutely ridiculous."
Bennett is a 29-year-old coming off a down season, but he matched the Patriots need for depth at the position for a relatively cheap price. If Gronkowski were able to vouch for Bennett's character and if Bennett and Gronkowski can build a trust to help adjust to the Patriots locker room and scheme, then this could be a very successful marriage.
Glazer also talks about how the 2007 Giants couldn't believe how easily they were defeating the Patriots offensive line in the Super Bowl; they thought that head coach Bill Belichick was setting them up so the New York defenders held back.
He also thinks Tom Brady will play until he's 45, and that DeflateGate was way out of hand.
Listen below.