Brandon Marshall has a conflicted legacy with Chicago Bears fans. In 2012 and 2013, he was one of the most dominant wide receivers the franchise has ever had. A true monster. However, as has been proven time and again, the guy just couldn’t keep himself out of trouble. By 2014, frustrations began to boil over inside the Bears locker room. Marshall was at the center of it, getting into shouting matches during or after games. It was enough for GM Ryan Pace to willingly trade him to the New York Jets the following offseason.
Marshall didn’t waste time taking shots at the Bears whenever possible, feeling he was in a far better situation with the Jets. The locker room issues were a thing of the past. Everything was back to normal. Except the reality is normal is not something that has ever followed this man around across a decade of NFL football.
Mere months into his stay with the team, Marshall was a witness to one of the craziest locker room fights in league history. One that saw linebacker IK Enemkpali break the jaw of quarterback Geno Smith over a debt of $600.
The receiver was there for it all and had quite a story to tell Rich Cimini of ESPN.
I remember looking to my left and seeing Geno kind of like give a look like, “Ha, ha, ha,” like laughing a guy off and shrugging him off. All of a sudden … boom! Geno is in a locker.
You see all these guys, including myself, running to the area. I was in the second wave of guys to go over there. I looked and IK is on Geno in [the] locker. You got all these guys, offensive and defensive linemen, trying to pull him off. They just couldn’t. I was like, “Holy crap.” I remember Geno coming up after a while, kind of like touching his jaw, with blood on his lips.
[Geno] was in shock and awe. I was also pissed off to the point where I wanted to fight IK. I was like, “Holy s—, you just potentially put out our starting quarterback.” Like, who does that? Like, how the hell does this happen? [Laughs] You know I don’t always have [my wits about me], so for me, I was like, “I’m going to slap the s— out of this guy.” Then I walked up to him and I saw his eyes. He had this red in his eyes. I was like, “This is not the guy you want to mess with.”
Brandon Marshall no doubt benefited from that disaster though
With Smith out for a long time, it forced the Jets to turn to longtime veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick. He and Marshall quickly forged a strong connection. One that saw the receiver have the best season of his career, going for 1,502 yards and 14 touchdowns. Sadly, as had become routine for Marshall, his individual greatness wasn’t enough to reach the playoffs. The Jets went 10-6 but failed to make the postseason.
Subscribe to the BFR Youtube channel and ride shotgun with Dave and Ficky as they break down Bears football like nobody else.
Things went downhill after that. Marshall made it three more seasons but injuries began to slow him down and he was done by the end of 2018. Would things have been different if Geno Smith had remained the quarterback? Doubtful. The guy never had the true look of a starter anyway. Some might say Enemkpali did the Jets a favor.
If nothing else, the sequence of events proves the Bears probably made the right call on trading the receiver. Though he did have another great year in ’15, his decline followed quickly after. Besides, as has proven the case, drama always seems to find Brandon Marshall wherever he goes.
