http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/08/11/geno-smith-punch-new-york-jets-nfl-mailbag
The Punch and the Fallout
'You don't walk up to a man and punch him in the face.' Those were the words of Jets coach Todd Bowles after a backup linebacker cold-cocked Geno Smith in the locker room, knocking out the QB for up to 10 weeks. Examining the repercussions of the surreal incident, plus reader mail
by Peter King
“We are really big on family and just doing things the right way. The way my dad raised me was to always respect others and don't step on anybody's toes.”
—Linebacker IK Enemkpali of the New York Jets, quoted by the Louisiana Tech athletic department in January 2014.
PITTSFORD, N.Y. — It is difficult to reconcile that quote with what happened in Florham Park, N.J., on Tuesday morning.
That was when the 6-1, 272-pound Enemkpali, as chiseled a player as the Jets employ, reared back and busted quarterback Geno Smith’s jaw in two places with one punch. According to multiple reports, the altercation happened because Enemkpali laid out $600 for Smith to attend a July charity event of his, and Smith hadn’t paid him back for it when it turned out he couldn’t go.
Smith will be out for six to 10 weeks, according to the team. The starter now becomes itinerant quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick—and not insignificantly, that actually might be a good thing for the Jets. Fitzpatrick is well-experienced in first-year Jets offensive coordinator Chan Gailey’s offensive scheme, and Smith was still learning it. In fact, the Browns would rather have faced Smith in the season-opener. But that’s not a major consideration this morning. The fact that Smith got punched out—by a teammate, in his own locker room—and will miss two months … that’s the big deal.
If you’re rookie Jets coach Todd Bowles, you have to ask yourself: This ‘same old Jets’ thing was supposed to be a thing of the past when Rex Ryan left, but what in the world have I gotten myself into?
“It had nothing to do with football,” a chagrined Bowles said in the first of two briefings on a surreal day in Jetsland. “It was something very childish. He got cold-cocked, sucker-punched, whatever you want to call it, in the jaw. He has a broken jaw, fractured jaw.
“It's something we don't tolerate, something we can't stand. You don't walk up to a man and punch him in the face.”
For the first time in 39 years, apparently you do.
* * *
Geno Smith (Ronald C. Modra/Getty Images)
Thirty-nine years later, the man who traded the last cold-cocker of a starting NFL quarterback had one question.
“Why didn’t anyone come to Geno Smith’s defense the way our guys came to Roger’s defense?” Gil Brandt wondered.
Interesting. Brandt was the Dallas Cowboys’ personnel director in 1976, when backup quarterback Clint Longley and future Hall of Fame starting quarterback Roger Staubach got into an altercation that forced the trade of Longley to San Diego.
More about that in a second. But—and this is significant—we don’t know enough about the one-punch fight between Smith and bit-player backup linebacker Enemkpali on Tuesday morning. We don’t know if there was enough time to break up a boiling situation, or if it happened so fast there was nothing anyone could do.
But everyone around the league was wondering just that Tuesday night: How on God’s green earth could a starting NFL quarterback allow himself to get into a situation like this? And would any player on Andrew Luck’s team, or Tom Brady’s, or Russell Wilson’s, ever dream of laying his hands on that guy, regardless of what the dispute was about?
The details in the Cowboys’ story are a little fuzzy now. Brandt’s recollection differs from the memory of some Cowboy players in a Matt Mosley story for the Dallas Morning News a decade ago. Brandt recalls Longley and Staubach getting into a fight after a training-camp practice in California in 1976, Longley riding Staubach about it being time for him to retire (he was 34 in that training camp), and Staubach saying if he wanted to discuss it, they’d discuss it after practice on an adjacent field.
They fought then, and then later, in the team’s locker room in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Brandt recalls Longley trying to hit Staubach in the head with a folding chair—just like in the old days of professional wrestling. The players recalled the fight to Mosley, but not the chair. They say that Longley cheap-shotted Staubach when he wasn’t looking in the locker room.
This is not in dispute:
“After it happened,” Brandt said Tuesday night, “Tom Landry called. He wanted Longley traded immediately.” Brandt, within a day, had Longley dealt to San Diego.
Almost four decades later, in a training camp on the other side of the country, Enemkpali, a sixth-round pick of the team in 2014, was released by the Jets.
“I should have just walked away from the situation,” Enemkpali said in a statement.
I’ve covered the NFL since 1984. A few times over the years, people have asked me what I know that they don’t know—or what I see behind the curtain that they cannot see. Often, I say it’s the simple fact that lots of people on teams in the NFL—even teams with supposed great chemistry—do not like each other. It is foolish to think that 90 men in the course of a hot summer month of practice, or 53 men once Labor Day comes and the final rosters are formed, all sing
Kumbaya every day at practice.
“We almost had a fight at the end of practice today,” Browns coach Mike Pettine said Tuesday afternoon. “It happens. I use the phrase ‘competitive not combative.' We want to compete hard, we don’t want to brother-in-law each other, or just kind of do the dance and just get through plays. We want to compete but it just can’t cross the line and become combative. We’ve had our share of training camp fights, nothing crazy.
These are big, prideful men who are competitive as heck. A lot of it comes down to the respect thing. If they feel they have been disrespected, you’ll see that’s when the fuse burns all the way down. I’ve been around teams that fought a lot, I’ve been around teams that handled it well. A lot of it is just the mix of personalities. Most coaches, though, will be like no, no, no, break it up, but inside—I’ve seen a bad practice turn into a damn good one because of a fight. It can change it.”
I asked Pettine: “Is it a misconception that football teams are one big happy family?”
“That’s very much a misconception,” he said. “And to me, that’s part of our job as a staff, is to manage it. You hope your staff, even, can be a happy family, and that’s rarely the case. I think we’re pretty close with that here, and that’s why I think it makes it easier to manage your players when you are all on the same page from a staff standpoint, but I don’t think you’ll ever have 90 guys that all get along. I think if you have 90 guys that all get along, you’re probably not going to be very good.”
You’re not going to be very good, either, when your quarterback is getting popped by a marginal player on the edge of the roster. Don’t draw many conclusions from the incident in New Jersey on Tuesday. Just this one: Geno Smith’s road to the long-term Jets starting job just got a lot bumpier.