New York Jets quarterback Geno Smith was spotted over the weekend playing catch with a friend just two days after undergoing surgery for a broken jaw. The team is not happy about it.
Several photos that the New York Post captured showed Smith tossing a ball around without a shirt on.
Geno Smith post sucker-punch surgery — “I feel great. You see me throwin’, right?” http://t.co/rf5czoLShz pic.twitter.com/iahzDOTdZ6
— New York Post (@nypost) August 16, 2015
You could see that his jaw was swollen, but the former West Virginia star insisted he feels great and had a message for Jets fans.
I feel great,” Smith said. “You see me throwin’, right? Get ready for me to come back.”
We’re sure the Jets are pleased that Smith is recovering well, but head coach Todd Bowles said the quarterback should not be casually throwing a football around.
“He shouldn’t be doing it right now,” Bowles said after practice Sunday, via Dom Cosentino of NJ.com. “We handled that internally. We had that discussion.”
Bowles added that Smith has been spoken to but that the team will not discipline him.
“He just got surgery; you don’t want him getting infected,” the coach said. “[The doctors] said he couldn’t do anything physical, so I’m going by the rules of what they said. … As an organization, we handled that. It’s not disappointing; it’s something you don’t want to do. We addressed it.”
Is it a huge deal that Smith was playing catch? Not really. Could a ball have hit him in the face? In theory, yes.
If nothing else, Smith’s mistake was allowing the Post to take photos of him and then bragging about his progress in an interview. With all the stories that have been floating around in the wake of Smith having his jaw broken by a former teammate, his best bet right now is to keep a low profile.
