- I didn’t decide not to go to the White House after the Super Bowl.
I said it before the game.
Everybody else jumped on the bandwagon after the game.
I just don’t fuck with the President.
If anybody invite me to their house that I don’t want to eat they food,
I ain't going.
And he looks like somebody who I don’t want to eat they food.
That’s like going to have lunch with Darth Vader.
- [Laughing]
♪♪♪
- So who we got in the pool hall today?
We got a good friend, Marty B. Whats good with you baby?
- Nothing much happening, staying on this side with things that are going on in the world.
- We got enough space between us over here, man.
Go head let me see how nice you are though.
- I really am more into pool tricks.
- Ok.
- I like to watch people do that stuff. Like the Black Widow, she was cold.
But I just feel like this a weird game for you to pick anyway.
Who the fuck picks pool as a activity between two men to have a conversation?
Shit is weird to me. - Hey, well guess what?
- Hey, for some reason 2.5 million people want to watch this shit.
- What the hell is that?
Did you make anything?
- I didn’t make anything. This my first shot!
- When you look back at that Super Bowl season,
take me through that year. What do you remember from that year?
- That started with getting traded.
I was at Disney [Land] when I got the call to say I was going to be traded.
So then my daughter's birthday was around, and we were going to Disney [Land].
Bill Belichick called me and
he's like, "Hey, we need to get you out here for your physical" or whatever.
I'm like, "Well, coach, I'm at Disney [Land] right now. I literally cannot come."
- [Laughing]
- And I'm trying to enjoy Disney [Land] with my family.
Mickey is there, Goofy is there, everyone is there, you know?
It's just like, "These guys are great." And at the same time I've been traded.
Bill called me back.
He's like, "Well, we got to get you out here;
otherwise the trade won't go through if we don't get the physical."
And I was just kind of like, "Well,
that sounds like a you thing."
- [Laughing]
- But then my agent called me, he was like, "Hey, no. You got to go.
You got to go."
And I was like, "I can't go tomorrow, like two days from now? Why I got to stop my life right now
to fly to fucking Boston
to go see this motherfucker and go do a MRI for them?
I'm here right now trying to—I'm at Disney [Land] for crying out loud. Not like I’m—"
- For your daughter's birthday.
- Yeah, they don't give a fuck.
But then Tom calls me.
- Tom Brady?
- Tom Brady, yeah, Tom.
- We all don't have a personal one-on-one connection with Tom Brady to just call him Tom.
- Well me and Tom became cool because of our love for interior design.
- What?
- We bonded over Pinterest.
- Wait. You and Tom Brady would just surf Pinterest?
- Yeah. So Tom calls me,
and he was like, "Man, I'm so excited about getting you out here."
I was just kind of like, "Yes, but Tom,
do I have to go out there right now cause I feel like they're kind of making this shit up right now?
I don't know how this goes. Like do I have to come?"
He's like, "Yeah, bud,
you kinda have to go do that right now." I was like, "All right.”
- So how did that season go? For someone like you as you're talking about your career,
I mean that season for a lot of people was a season
many people won't forget.
Even the casual fan remembers that Patriots' season.
- For me, I think that was the most fun I ever had playing football
from Pee Wee to just any time on any team. It was just fun. Like all the guys were cool.
No one bothered me about, like, what I was doing or if I was at art museums or whatever.
And I respected the way that they treated people like men.
-Mmm, what that mean? - Right?
A lot of these coaches talk to players as if they're boys, right?
I'm like, "I got a wife and kid, coach. What the fuck are you talking about, man? I mean, shit.
- Did you ever grow up wanting to be a Super Bowl champion?
- That's a tough question because I don't think it was my idea of it.
First person that I experienced it with was when my brother won a Super Bowl.
And he told me it was like having another child.
So when my brother won, we were talking about it.
And first of all, he's an asshole.
Because I was in Seattle and like,
I was staying at his house.
I was like, "Hey, man, you got some of that orange juice?" He's like, "Yeah. Go get some out the refrigerator."
I open it and there's a Super Bowl trophy, you know what I’m saying? He just had this thing like you get in the car and its in the car with him, you know what I’m saying?
He was like, "Yo this is the greatest feeling ever, etc., etc., etc.”
And so for me, I'm like, "Damn, that sounds good. I want to feel that.
- But it was different in New England. Going in the Super Bowl, what was that experience like?
- Yeah, we were getting our ass kicked.
I mean, what the fuck were the Falcons doing? They were celebrating at the halftime.
- [Laughing]
- One thing I remember, I think it was 2 Chainz who came down like at the halftime.
That I remember their sideline more so than our sideline.
2 Chainz, T.I.,
it was like everybody you will imagine being at the strip club without the strippers.
Man, Tupac was probably on that sideline.
- [Laughing]
- Cuz looking at their sideline, you'd be like,
"These motherfuckers really think they won already!"
- Take me through the second half.
During that come back as it happens,
what's going on in your mind as you see the Falcons slipping this thing away?
- That's the whole thing:
nothing.
I was like water,
and all my teammates were like water.
Basically it was just like so focused, and enter a space of flow that I've never experienced in sports before.
In fact, when we won,
I had to ask Tom Brady. I said, "Yo, Tom, did we win?"
He was like, "Yeah. We're champions."
I said, "Oh, shit...
- You didn’t know you won?
- We champions!" I don't know the fucking overtime rules in Super Bowl. Shit, they changed it.
- [Laughing]
I'm telling you, bro. I was in flow. Like, I don't know what the score is, right?
I had no idea. Like, I just, that was my only time of like really snapping out of flow,
cause I'm looking around and guys are running around. We're all crying,
and I don't know why I'm crying.
My brother comes down, and I think I was extra emotional.
"We're Super Bowl champions, the Bennett brothers. Like who the fuck can say that shit?”
- I thought you were going to be really damn good at this game. How many episodes of this have you done?
- [Laughing]
- What's going on in your mind in Chicago
as now you finally left Boston?
You've done everything that you had to do that a Super Bowl champion does
- It may be the pinnacle for somebody, but like
it was never that pinnacle moment for my life. I actually felt like, "Damn,
I've dedicated 20 years of my life for this shit?"
I didn't make the world a better place, right?
I didn't make any contributions to changing the world and the idea of what I feel like should change the world.
- So now off season, you're sitting in this space where you're like, "I spent 20 years doing this; it wasn't worth it."
What are you doing that offseason then?
- I had to get another job because I was just in between jobs. I ended up going to the Packers, which was fucking disastrous from day one.
After that, I ended back with the Patriots.
I went on IR, but when I went on IR I had an injury that I couldn't really fix, which was a broken spirit.
And there's no type of treatment that the NFL could provide for a broken spirit. There's nothing they could do for me at this point.
There’s nothing Bill Belichick could say, Tom or the trainers. My spirit was broken in a way that
there was something else I was looking for that
no one in the sporting world could give me.
The only thing that could truly heal was art and just making things.
When I make things is when I feel most like myself.
So after that, you know, I kind of rekindled this love I had with Japanese culture.
You know I have been studying, you know, Wabi-Sabi and yokai and Shintoism and all these things.
I told my wife, I was like, "Man, I really feel like I should go to Japan."
- How long were you there for?
- I was there for 10 days.
Tom Brady had a guy over there named Leonard
they put me in connection with.
Basically all I did was I studied the Japanese culture, I prayed to the Japanese gods,
learned language, learned their art. I had my notebook, taking notes, drawing things and like just taking it all in. Like I was very present.
And it made me reflect like, "Damn, why the fuck do I do something that I don't love every single part of?"
After that, I came back. I retired like a week after coming back from Japan. I told my wife, I was like, "I'm retiring."
So I did a little art piece and I did that, then I retired.
But it was really because of the connection in Japan with the people.
- Do you still feel like you have a broken spirit?
- Do I have a broken spirit? Hell nah. I'm fucking rich as fuck.
Meaning, rich as of mind and spirit.
I'm the healthiest, I'm a better husband.
I didn't want my daughter to grow up with a football dad because that enigma could take over what your dad is.
If my daughter be like, "My dad traveled the world. He spent summers in Japan.
You know, he built video games. He changed the world. He brought Internet infrastructure to underserved communities."
That's my legacy.
Right? Football is not my legacy, and it never was.
I feel like I'm a better me without the game of football.