Giants sign TE Martellus Bennett

The Marty B Show is moving from Big D to the Big Apple.(Getty Images)

With all the money flying around the last 24 hours or so, it's easy to overlook that the league's best teams (the Patriots, Giants, Packers, Steelers and Ravens, for instance) have been relatively quiet. And the moves they have made weren't of the salary-cap-busting variety. Take the Giants, who filled a need at tight end when they signed Martellus Bennett to a one-year, $2.5 million contract.

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New York lost Jake Ballard and Travis Beckum to ACL injuries during Super Bowl XLVI and in Bennett they found an athletic, high-upside alternative on the cheap. But there's a reason he wasn't highly sought after in free agency. A former second-round pick out of Texas A&M, Bennett never caught more than 33 passes in any of his four NFL seasons, and has just four touchdowns, all coming as a rookie.

Still, the Giants like him for his pass-catching potential, though Bennett's has been victimized by drops and sporadic play in his short career. A few weeks ago, he told ProFootballTalk.com that "I want to be the No. 1 guy … I feel like I'm a 60-catch-plus guy on a team, so I want to be in a system where I could do (that)."

The New York Daily News' Ralph Vacchiano points out that Bennett is known more for his antics off the field than his accomplishments on it. "In 2010, a website published nude pictures of Bennett, apparently given to the site by one of his ex-girlfriends," Vacchiano wrote Wednesday. "Bennett eventually apologized with a statement through the team. And in 2009, he was fined one game check (about $22,000) for releasing an offensive, profanity-laced rap video on YouTube in which he wore a Cowboys helmet while using derogatory words for African-Americans and homosexuals. The NFL wasn't amused and neither were the Cowboys, who called the video 'conduct detrimental to the club.'"

We'll see if the old cliche "Winning fixes everything" applies here. If it doesn't, the Giants will only be out $2.5 million. Not a bad investment by an organization fresh off their second Super Bowl title in four years. By comparison, former Seahawks tight end John Carlson signed with the Vikings Wednesday. The terms: five years, $25 million. Carlson missed the 2011 season due to injury. In his three previous seasons, he had 137 receptions for 1,519 yards and 13 touchdowns.

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