ENGLEWOOD, Colo. - He keeps his head down all the way, but slow, loping strides lead Cowboys rookie tight end Martellus Bennett to the team's bus. He hardly looks up in the 50 yards to the charter, but if he does, he smiles.
Few topics this 2008 training camp have drawn as much attention as Bennett's body language. It started with two sentences written by "Sports Illustrated" scribe Peter King, who said the 21-year-old appears to sulk. By the closing credits in episode two of HBO's "Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Dallas Cowboys," all minds had been made up - these universal opinions based on two sentences and maybe five minutes of nationally-broadcast video.
He doesn't care about football. He's not listening to the coaches. He's immature, and a waste of 6-6, 265-pounds of raw, born-to-play tight end talent. He's a throw away second-round pick, they say.
His body language and eye contact is to blame for all of it. When he walks, his head is down, always, and he's never too excited. This isn't new for Bennett.
"That just the way I walk, it's the way I carry myself," the Texas A&M product said. "Even in college I'd make a big play, I'd just get up and walk back. I just walk funny. People judge a book before they read it. A movie, they see the previews."
Maybe Bennett's not the most graceful person on foot, but he has a point. Fans and media members may have rushed to judge based on a tiny dose of information, and even less first-hand knowledge. As HBO Sports President Ross Greenberg said in his visit to the Cowboys training camp in Oxnard, Calif. last week, for every hour of film "Hard Knocks" airs, some 300-400 hours are left on the cutting room floor.
So it's entirely possible the big tight end really isn't tuning out his position coach, John Garrett, as the footage makes it seem. Maybe Bennett actually does like football, and wants to succeed. That's what he did in college, after all, where he caught 105 balls for 1,246 yards and 10 touchdowns in just three years and 23 starts in College Station. His 29 consecutive games with at least one catch is a Texas A&M record. So it's hard to say Bennett is a hot and cold player, who might try to play well one day and give no effort the next.
The effort is there, but the jump to the NFL for an underclassman can be hard.
"Some days you have bad days," Bennett said. "When you're in a two-a-day football camp you're not going to have a great day, every day. Usually I always have to push myself, (but) they've got somebody else to push me along."
That somebody is Garrett, who, according to the first two showings of "Hard Knocks," appears to be in Bennett's ear constantly, and for good reason.
"He's got excellent size," Garrett said, ready to go through the litany of physical attributes the rookie possesses. "He's got excellent strength. He can run. He's got long arms. He's powerful. So you put all those things together and there's a lot of raw talent there. It just needs to be honed in.
"He realized that he has to do certain things this way, or he's not going to be able to be successful on the field."
But Garrett's assessment of the big man's attitude is contradictory to what has been shown on HBO. Bennett's been seen rolling his eyes or laughing after Garrett has given instructions. He's been depicted as slow to follow instructions, as a slow learner. The nature of his relationship with Garrett can appear to be one of force and defiance. That's made-for-TV stuff, according to Bennett.
"Me and Coach Garrett have a great relationship," Bennett said. "I'm kind of like his son on the field. He's always on me, always pushing me to get better every second. It could be a little thing. He always knows what I could do better. It could be my shirt being too long, it's anything. (The coaches) are always on me.
"That's how my coach was when I first got to college. It's kind of like trying to build a relationship, so once we get a feel for each other, we'll have a great relationship."
Another Cowboy rookie who was the victim of the "Hard Knocks" producers was running back Keon Lattimore. In the first episode Lattimore was made out to be hopeless. He couldn't catch, he wasn't getting anywhere on his runs, he couldn't even walk up the stairs without falling over his own feet.
But the "Hard Knocks" narrator failed to mention Lattimore slipped on the stairs because of a body spasm - a side effect of the hard work he's put in during camp. Lattimore understands how Bennett must feel.
"I had a lot of the "Hard Knocks" people come to me and say, 'If you see the show, just pay it no never mind,'" Lattimore said. "That's what they're trying to get across with the young rookies. They want to show you going through a tough time. They show you progressing, the hard work you put in and the progress you make from the beginning to the end of camp."
To his credit, Bennett seems to understand the pre-packaged, fictional side of un-scripted television, saying "I'm not tripping. It's a reality show . . . it's like a movie." Garrett points out that while the viewer can be led to believe something based on a few minutes of strung-together clips from on the field, fair or unfair, there's a lot going on behind closed doors that the HBO cameras don't capture. He said Bennett takes notes in meetings and rarely makes the same mistake twice.
One thing the television cameras didn't exaggerate, though, is the tough time Bennett had in his preseason debut against San Diego. On consecutive plays he dropped a ball after taking a big hit, then let Chargers linebacker Shaun Phillips slip by nearly untouched for an easy sack on Brad Johnson. Bennett said he was jittery that first game. When he went back to watch the film he didn't recognize himself, and told Garrett it was the last time the coach would see him play so poorly.
"His first game was a great learning experience for him," Garrett said. "He learned that the speed of a preseason game is much different than practice. There are things that came out of the game that he needed to work on, and we made that very clear to him.
"He's made a concerted effort to work on the things that he needs to improve."
Bennett said the disappointment from the San Diego game triggered a turnaround in his game. And since the team got to Denver on Tuesday, he's regained the confidence he might have lost in the early going of camp. That's impressive to Garrett, since the Broncos run a different style of defense from the Cowboys and Chargers - it's not what the rookie is used to seeing. Still, the improvement is evident.
"I've got my swagger back," Bennett said. "The last five practices have been my best practices of the whole camp. I've had a really good week. I feel really confident in the offense and the way I've been playing."
Bennett certainly won't unseat starter Jason Witten, but he's also three years behind Witten's NFL-experienced backup Tony Curtis, offensive coordinator Jason Garrett said near the beginning of camp. Jason Garrett said training camp is about seeing what young guys can handle, and after a few weeks of work, John Garrett envisions a nice role for the rookie.
"I don't see it as a redshirt year," John Garrett said. "Both of them are going to play, and it's our job as coaches to see what they do best and insert them into the offense - run game, pass game, pass protection-wise - where they can help us the fastest. I see both of them playing a lot."
The Cowboys wouldn't have drafted Bennett so high if they didn't have a plan for him. He can expedite the plan by accepting coaching, which he seems to be doing more than one would be led to believe. As Garrett says, the guys listens. But it's hard to tell what a player is absorbing just by judging their body language.
And you can't tell how fast someone learns by looking at how slowly they walk.
"That's how people are," Bennett said, laughing off the idea people think they know everything about him based solely on his stride. "For all they know, I could have scoliosis or something."
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