Martellus Bennett: Extremely High Percentage of NFL Players Smoke Marijuana

The recently retired Super Bowl champ puts the number at, oddly, about 89%.

Tight end Martellus Bennett #88 of the New England Patriots walks off the field after a 41-16 win over the Denver Broncos at Sports Authority Field at Mile High on November 12, 2017 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Justin Edmonds/Getty Images)
Tight end Martellus Bennett #88 of the New England Patriots walks off the field after a 41-16 win over the Denver Broncos at Sports Authority Field at Mile High on November 12, 2017 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Justin Edmonds/Getty Images)
Getty Images

With nicknames like the Big Weirdo, Black Unicorn and Orange Dino it shouldn’t come as a surprise that recently retired NFL tight end Martellus Bennett gave a weird number when he was asked if more than 70 percent of NFL players smoke marijuana.

Instead of going with a nice, round number, Bennett went super-specific and said, “89 percent.” Obviously, the other surprising part of Bennett’s answer is that figure is so, ahem, high.

Marijuana use is prohibited by the NFL although the league does not go out of its way to curtail it and only tests players who don’t have a prior banned substance violation once per year.

Even still, nine out of ten NFL players (we’ll round up, sorry Bennett) using marijuana does seem like an exaggerated number. Then again, maybe not.

“There’s medical marijuana,” Bennett said. “So it’s like, there’s times of the year where your body just hurts so bad, that you don’t want to just be popping pills all the time. It ruins your liver. There’s a lot of these anti-inflammatories that you take for so long that, like, it starts to eat at your liver or kidneys and things like that. And a human made that. God made weed.”

The InsideHook Newsletter.

News, advice and insights for the most interesting person in the room.