Geno Smith sucker punched by teammate out 6-10 weeks with broken jaw/Won't press charges

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SierraRam

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the 49ers need linebackers
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RhodyRams

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I read somewhere that Smith threw a few punches, but they were intercepted:D
 

Amitar

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Geno should file criminal charges and the Jets should go after him in civil court.
 

BelgianRam

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Timoty
Holy Crap,
I was playing madden in franchise mode and saw this news in a ticker at the bottom of the screen and I tought, man EA is being harsh on the jets for simulating their quarterback having a broken jaw from a fight. I didn't realise it was real.

only the jets I guess
 

JUMAVA68

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He's a grown ass man that doesn't pay his debt's and keep his word I'm surprised this hasn't happen before.Your word as a man is everything doesn't matter if it was the owner of the team or a lowly 6th round pick LB that he gave his word to. If you give your word to do something do it and if you owe someone money pay it back.
 

Jorgeh0605

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Maybe Geno took the red "don't touch me" jersey off in the locker room. All is fair at that point right?
 

Loyal

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Geno should file criminal charges and the Jets should go after him in civil court.
You are the only person that said this, in this whole thread..Which I was about to do..So adding to your thoughts..
I don't know the laws of NJ/NY, but in most places, if a husband and a wife slap each other, both are arrested for assault. I have read from other posters that Smith put his finger in this guys face, and then the guy punched Smith..Sucker punch or no, does that matter? If this guy broke smiths jaw in a private residence or a bar, one or both are going to jail. It's a violent sport and we all love it..What happens on the field, stays on the field. Firing him for hitting Geno on the jaw, breaking it, therebye limiting his future possibilities, would not be fvcking enough. This guy should be in jail, with or without Geno Smith pressing charges.
 

blue4

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Maybe it's just me, but if I put my finger in another man's face then I'm trying to start something. If I'm doing that then I'm not sucker punched. If I got my jaw broke or my ass kicked I should have kept my finger where it belongs. As one poster said, if that guy would have been a talented LBer the narrative out of the team would be quite different. Civil court? He's a camp LBer. What are you going to get, two packs of Raman noodles and his mom's car? From the couple of player comments it seems both players were at fault, so to me criminal court seems like a lack of accountability on Smith's part. "I was equally responsible Your Honor, but I lost and I was drafted higher so he needs to be punished."

The other guy was already held accountable, having lost a potentially lucrative career.
 

Prime Time

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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.

* * *

mmqb-smith-geno.jpg

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.
 

Rynie

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How do I say black people almost always go for the sucker - punch without sounding racist?
 

Loyal

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So it's ok for a wife that slapped her husband and admitted it, should be be sent to jail? As I said in my post, what happens on the field, stays on the field. The locker room is after the pads are taken off, and you're supposed to be a normal human being again, which makes it different for me. So if breaking anothers jaw with a sucker punch isn't bad in a lockerroom..How about the Parking lot? How about 10 feet away from the stadium? When does an NFL Player get to be criminally responsible for an assault, and the little lady that reddens hubby's face with a slap in the privacy of her own home, is arrested?