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After five wonderful seasons with the Seattle Seahawks, defensive Michael Bennett was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles, a team that’s just won its first Super Bowl in franchise history.
Bennett was a vital part of not just the fearsome Seattle defense, but the team’s identity as a whole. He’s never one to shy away from a take, whether football-related or not, and between that and his occasional on-field spats, fan opinion of Bennett is mixed even within the Seahawks community.
I don’t think it’s over-the-top to suggest that this era of Seahawks football has produced a lot of players who are the definition of “You love to hate him, but you’d love to have him on your team.” Success breeds contempt, and many of you have read enough Enemy Reactions over the last several years to know that’s true.
Just how did Eagles fans view Bennett when he was a Seahawk? Well... let’s just say that they draw the line at trashing Sam Bradford. Here’s what happened in the 2015 offseason, which was when Philadelphia traded Nick Foles to the Rams for the former #1 overall draft picks.
Bennett:
“There’s some mediocre quarterbacks in the NFL that make a lot of money,” he said. “You take a guy like Sam Bradford — he’s never played really in the last three years, but he’s made more money than most guys in the NFL.”
Eagles fans:
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...But wait, we’re not done yet! Here are a handful of comments from the Bleeding Green Nation thread after Bennett took shots at their former QB in the 2016 offseason.
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At least Phunkadelphia should be happy, seeing as he wrote this less than two years ago.
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It’s funny how all of these remarks trashing Bennett as a mediocre DE — entirely predicated on sack numbers — were made during his best years!
Let’s backtrack a little bit to the 2014 season, when the Eagles lost 24-14 at home to Seattle, as Mark Sanchez threw for less than 100 yards and killed any comeback hopes by gifting Tharold Simon the only interception of his career.
Bennett teased that Sanchez was “trying to impersonate” a good quarterback, and here were a few responses in the Eagles’ Reddit page.
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This guy seemed pretty mad about the Eagles losing to the Seahawks in 2017. He almost set Twitter on fire with this take.
If the Eagles would have won .. Michael Bennett would have said the police beat him up... friggen liar POS..#Eagles
— Louis Dilonardo Sr. (@lad1258_louis) December 4, 2017
But now that Bennett is a member of the Eagles, just how quickly did their fans pull a 180? Well actually, it’s not as uniformly joyous as you may think.
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Don’t worry, there’s something similar coming up for 49ers fans and Richard Sherman, as much as that pains me to say.