Geno Smith on broken jaw: 'You've got to weather the storm and move on'

New York Jets quarterback Geno Smith admitted that he’s “extremely pissed” by the situation he finds himself in, having lost his job as the starter thanks to a sucker punch from a former teammate.

Smith spoke with Newsday’s Kimberley Martin in the locker room on Wednesday, his first comments about the Aug. 11 incident that saw Ikemefuna Enemkpali punch him over a $600 debt, breaking his jaw.

Now in his third season, this was to be a key year for Smith, who was a second-round pick out of West Virginia in 2013. Instead, he finds himself on a bit of an emotional roller coaster.

“If I was playing bad and got benched, that’s on me. But for something like this to happen, it’s like…,” Smith said. “What can you do? You’ve just got to, kind of, weather the storm and move on from there.”

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“Physically, I’m good,” Smith said, adding that he has one more hurdle to clear: his final X-ray, which will be in “the next week or so…Emotionally, it’s tough. But I’ve been getting good support in the locker room with the guys. Brandon [Marshall] has been on of the guys who’s always been in my corner and has been picking me up every day, if he sees me down. Cause it’s natural to kind of get down. You want to play, you want to be out there. But he’s keeping my spirits high and coach Bowles and Chan [Gailey], they put things in perspective for me. The key thing is, I’ve got to get healthy.”

Smith has lost eight pounds since undergoing surgery to fix his jaw, and is trying to keep a positive outlook and keep his temper in check, in part because teammates look to him as a leader.

It remains to be seen whether he’ll reassume the starting job from Ryan Fitzpatrick, who threw for two touchdowns in the Jets’ Week 1 win over the Browns, but Smith is trying to look at things through a team lens, not a selfish one.

"You want to say, OK, it's Fitz's team? But that's kind of pinning me and him against each other. We're all in this thing together. It's a collective bond, and it was that way when I was projected the starter and when I got hurt it was that way. And right now it's the same way."

Smith said Jets trainers have him drinking weight-gaining shakes, but he’s still losing muscle mass, joking that there are times he walks past a mirror and notes how skinny he looks.