Corruption? Collusion? Bennett Saga Has All The Makings Of A Made-For-TV Court Drama

In the film A Few Good Men, Tom Cruise portrayed a Navy Lawyer who is defending two Marines against Murder charges, a fellow Marine dying from the effects of lactic acidosis brought upon him by their actions in delivering was is known in the military as a "Code Red", the act of a Marine's shipmates employing disciplinary measures to correct ill behavior.

They tied up a Private Santiago, stuffed a rag in his mouth and sealed it with duct tape, claiming that they were given an order to deliver this brand of military training by shaving his head - but the aforementioned acidosis caused his lungs to bleed from lack of oxygen and he died within minutes.

When Cruise interrogated the physician in charge of the hospital on the base where the event occurred, Dr. Stone - played by Christopher Guess of This is Spinal Tap fame - claimed that the defendants treated the rag with a toxin, not a serious heart condition, that caused the acidosis to accelerate, leading to the Private's death, claiming that Santiago was given a clean bill of health...

...to which Cruise replied, "And that's why it had to be poison, right, Commander? Because Lord knows that if you put a man with a serious coronary condition back on duty with a clean bill of health and that man died from a heart-related incident, you'd have a lot to answer for, wouldn't you, doctor?"

The film was centered upon the corruption of a Marine Colonel who eventually incriminated himself on the stand - but stuff like that never happens in real life right? Particularly in something as insignificant as a football injury?

The weirdness surrounding the Martellus Bennett saga this past week has enough layers to make a drama lasagna, but it depends on what side of the table you sit on as to whether it is savory, or if it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

If on the Green Bay Packers' side, you sit slack-jawed in wonder at the speed in which Bennett went from a struggling and ill-fitting free agent signing to a locker room cancer that needed to be expressed and removed, while on the side of the New England Patriots, you're sitting pretty with a ready-made solution to the lack of viable depth at the tight end position.

At issue is a shoulder injury to the garrulous and candid tight end, the effusion of which caused a contentious rift between him and the Green Bay Packers, ultimately leading the team severing ties with Bennett, which in turn spurred many bad feelings, culminating in hand-wringing impromptu press conferences by Packers' coach Mike McCarthy and twitter bombs filled with color metaphors from Bennett himself.

The Packers released Bennett on Wednesday, claiming that he failed to report an injury to the team - a claim that Bennett vigorously denies, and makes clear on his multi-tweet twitter rant that effectively trashes the Packers' organization as being nothing more than tight-fisted misers who went for a public cash-grab in the wake of Bennett pondering retirement from the game after this season.

While that's really between Bennett and the Packers, the Patriots are bound to become entangled in the drama off the field as NFL.com's Ian Rappaport cites sources that the injury in question is actually the same injury that he suffered in the Patriots' week twelve contest last season against the New York Jets, and was listed on the team's injury report as part of a laundry list of maladies that Bennett eventually played through.

The Packers claim, through their failure to disclose designation, that Bennett's injury was a pre-existing condition and that the mercurial tight end failed to disclose it to team doctors during his physical, which he obviously passed and then signed his three-year, $21 million deal.

Unless Green Bay's management has some information that could solidly refute Rappaport's tome, this entire debacle makes the Packers' organization look like bumbling fools.

First, since Bennett's shoulder injury with the Patriots was well documented through weekly reports to the league, one would think that the Packers' team physicians would have taken extra care to scrutinize the joint - but they gave Bennett a clean bill of health which logically would place the onus on the Packers.

One has to think that there is more to this story than Bennett calling the Packers' organization a bunch of liars and the Packers acting like like jilted lovers - there has to be right?

However, on the surface, that's exactly what it is, and neither side of the argument escapes without a significant hit to their position, and it's hard to distinguish which one looks worse. As for Bennett, he appears as a grass-isn't-always-greener fence-hopper, shutting it down when Packers' quarterback Aaron Rodgers suffered what may be a season-ending fractured clavicle...

...while the Packers appear to be involved in some sort of preternatural damage control scheme, trying to save face for a bad free agency fit by blaming everything on the player when there is clear evidence that Bennett's injury, while indeed preexisting -  was well-documented.

While that documentation appears to be an albatross around the necks of the Packers' organization, there is still the matter of Bennett quitting on his team when the going got tough - a blueprint that was fresh off the presses from 2014 when running back LeGarrette Blount walked out on the Pittsburgh Steelers and eventually ended up back in Foxborough.

Blount took some heat for the way he walked out on his teammates and Bennett has already raised the ire of Rodgers and several other Packers for his portrayal of the team physician as a corrupt, blamestorming quack that is a pulling a "Commander Stone", the doctor claiming that Bennett didn't reveal his existing injury during his initial physical before signing on.

So no one in this filthy drama is innocent, and while the Packers seek to recoup their signing bonus from Bennett, of which he has been payed $2.1 million of a guaranteed $6.3 million, Bennett is reportedly set to suit up for the Patriots as they face the Broncos in Denver on Sunday night.

To many, the fact that Bennett is back in New England where he won a title last season with the Patriots seems like a case of dark malfeasance on the part of the Patriots' organization, perhaps even collusion, as this is the second such incident in three years. But unlike what happened with Blount, whom the Patriots waited on the clear waivers before approaching him with an offer, New England submitted a claim to the league office on Bennett, and was awarded the player when no other team stepped forward.

Obviously, this has nothing to do with the Patriots, other than they are set to reap the windfall of having Bennett back in the lineup.

This controversy is far from over, and probably will not be settled by anything less than an official investigation and a formal arbiter - and probably not until the offseason. But in this case, if you will pardon the pun, this is exactly what the doctor ordered for New England's offense.