Bears’ reaction to Martellus Bennett’s taunts: ‘grain of salt’

One day after ESPN aired video of the Patriots tight end Martellus Bennet ripping quarterback Jay Cutler’s leadership and calling his former Bears teammates “bitches,” Bears coach John Fox said he doesn’t pay the comments “any mind.”

“I think most of our guys are way beyond that,” Fox said. “They’re professionals, they’ve been around for a while, typically in a football season there’s a lot of outside noise, but I don’t think it’ll faze our group.”

Safety Chris Prosinski said to consider the source.

“Everybody who was here last year knows Martellus,” Prosinski said in a half-empty locker room after practice Wednesday at Halas Hall. “I loved Martellus when he was here. But he’s gonna say those things — you kinda gotta take it with a grain of salt.

“No way is that true. I’ve been in three NFL locker rooms now and there’s nobody in here that I wouldn’t go to war with. That’s just Martellus.”

Less than half of the Bears’ 53-man roster was on the team last year. The list includes Cutler, who Bennett said was not a leader.

“Some people that you want to be a leader are not the guy that’s the leader,” he told ESPN’s “E:60” in an interview conducted over the summer that aired Wednesday. “And everyone in the locker room knows that this is not the leader, but this is what you want the face of the team to look like.”

Bennett blamed his Bears teammates for their 19-29 record over three seasons.

“We just had a bunch of bitches on the roster — that’s why we didn’t win games — and coaches liked the bitches,” he said.

His brother Michael Bennett, the Seahawks’ star defensive end, called Cutler the “worst quarterback in the NFL” in the ESPN the Magazine story written in August off the same interview.

“I’d be open,” Martellus Bennett said in the story, “and he’d throw into double coverage.”

When told of the comments in August, Cutler said that “I could say something clever and smart, but I’ll just pass.”