GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Confidence wouldn’t seem to be a problem for a team that made it to the NFC Championship Game last season, but it sounds like Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers believes that could be one of the missing ingredients for a return to the Super Bowl.
And Rodgers thinks new tight end Martellus Bennett brings just that.
Bennett won a Super Bowl with the New England Patriots last season and then signed a three-year, $21 million deal with the Packers in the early stages of free agency this offseason.
“He brings a different type of attitude,” Rodgers said Tuesday following an OTA practice. “He is a very interesting person. He's got a lot of great interests. He cares about football. He cares about dominating. He brings that grit and that attitude to the field where he wants to dominate the guy over him, whether he's blocking or catching passes. And I think he's going to bring some extreme confidence to the locker room, which we need."
The outgoing and outspoken Bennett seemed taken aback by Rodgers’ comments.
“Aaron said that about me? That was nice,” Bennett said. “I don't know what he means by confidence. I feel I'm a good-looking guy, different things like that. I mean overall, I talk to a lot of the guys all the time, conversations. I don't know, I think you just hope it rubs off on the other guys, [so you] recognize, compliment guys, pushing them to get better, letting them know 'Hey, that was a great catch. Good job. Hey, I really like that.' Or 'Hey, man how'd you do that? Show me how you did it.'
“So it's a lot of questions and a lot of, you know, you want to water other people's gardens. You just don't want to tend to your own garden all the time. That's where I feel most fulfilled as a person. Sorry to get philosophical, but yeah.”
Rodgers also pointed to Bennett as one of the possible new leaders on a team that suffered some key losses in free agency. Among the departures were three playoff captains: Micah Hyde, T.J. Lang and Julius Peppers.
“You look at our captain’s photo; three of those six guys are gone,” Rodgers said. “That’s a big loss in leadership, so we need guys to step up. I think there’s some natural guys who can step up, the three-, four-, five- and six-year guys who are now given opportunities to play a bigger role for us. David Bakhtiari, Bryan Bulaga, Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, Morgan [Burnett] is already a natural leader for us, bringing in Marty into the mix, Mike Daniels, Nick Perry, the guys who have been paid or been here a while bring that kind of clout. We need those guys to fill some voids in the leadership department.”