Bennett certainly doesn’t lack for confidence, and he insists he is a team-first player despite Green Bay being his fifth NFL stop. He talks in terms of wanting “to water other people’s gardens,” of not being “a guy that points to the back of my jersey” and of believing that having Tom Brady and Rodgers as his quarterbacks in back-to-back seasons makes him “fortunate enough to pick the right guys to play with in my career.”

He also says winning the Super Bowl with the Patriots last year — after reaching the postseason only once in his first eight NFL seasons — gave him a better understanding of what he’s been chasing. With only six players left on the Packers’ roster from their Super Bowl XLV-winning 2010 team (Rodgers, wide receiver Jordy Nelson, outside linebacker Clay Matthews, right tackle Bryan Bulaga, kicker Mason Crosby and safety Morgan Burnett), Bennett’s more recent experience gives him a teachable moment to point to with his ring-deprived teammates.

“The interesting thing about the Super Bowl is it’s everybody’s ultimate goal, and that’s what every guy wants to do,” Bennett said. “(But) you (have to) get that taste to actually know why you’re playing. Because for a long time, you had this idea of something, this beautiful thing out there, (but) you’d never seen it, never really touched it.