Brandon Marshall defends Geno Smith after punching incident

Former Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall emerged Monday as the first pro-Geno Smith witness in the aftermath of the quarterback getting punched by teammate IK Enemkpali.

Marshall, now a wideout for the Jets, appeared on ESPN’s “Mike & Mike” and said he was a witness to the incident, which led to a broken jaw for Smith. There were reports Smith had taunted Enemkpali before the sucker punch.

Not so, said Marshall.

“Did he point his finger in his face? No, he didn’t,” Marshall said. “Geno Smith, he didn’t do anything wrong that day. It’s just an unfortunate situation. It’s a body blow for us, but we have to move forward. We’ll probably have another couple of days, a couple of weeks with the New York media, of answering these questions. But we’re built for this. We don’t want any distractions. We just want to move forward. We feel like we have a great opportunity.”

Marshall shot down an attempt at a follow-up question:

“I’m proud of the kid since I’ve been here, but I’m not answering any more Geno Smith questions,” he said. “We have to move forward and I don’t want to be a distraction to my team. There’s a lot of speculation out there. All we can do is move forward.”

[h/t New York Post]