Geno Smith, the former Jets starting quarterback who only lost that job when he got punched in the locker room last summer, is still pissed off. It's been a year -- exactly -- since IK Enemkpali clocked Smith in the jaw and sent him to the hospital, which cleared Ryan Fitzpatrick's path to the starting job.

A year later, Smith spoke with ESPN.com about the punch and his relegation to the bench. His comments revealed several things.

Before we move on to the quotes, it's important to note that all four of them came via ESPN.com's story, which was written by Rich Cimini. You can read that story here, which also goes into detail about Smith's offseason routine and how he relied on Brandon Marshall's support.

OK, onto the takeaways. First, Smith is still pissed off, because he believes that he's good enough to start in the NFL:

"Every day I'm pissed off until I get my job back. Until I'm a starting quarterback, I'm pissed off every day. That's my mentality, that's my competitive nature. I want to win so badly, deep inside of me. I'm not pissed off at anyone, but I do believe I'm a starting quarterback in this league, and I believe I can do great things."

Second, Smith believes he handled the incident the right way:

"When I look back on this when I'm 40, 50 years old, I'll ask myself, 'What time in my life made me a man?' I think this was that time in my life. It was so easy to say, 'Hey, this is not my fault. I'm the victim here, and this guy should be going to jail.' Instead, I manned up. I owned it. I took responsibility for whatever actions I had in that altercation, and I chose to let that fuel me to become a better man and a better player.

Third, Smith thought he was going to regain his starting job when he got healthy:

"Of course, yeah, I expected to get my job back once I came back, but that didn't happen. So what do you do? Do you begin to pout? Do you give up on your dreams? Or do you keep moving forward, keep pressing forward and understand that things will come back around?"

Fourth, he sort of, kind of, compared his situation to Joe Montana and Tom Brady. Rather, put another way, he's drawing inspiration from Hall of Famer caliber quarterbacks:

"If you look at the history of great quarterbacks, from Joe Montana being picked late to Tom Brady being picked late to Steve Young and what he faced in his early years to Kurt Warner ... I mean, all those guys -- Troy Aikman -- struggled in the beginning. But somehow, they continued to press on and got better."

OK, so Smith clearly still believes that he's still on the right career path, even if he's taken a bit of a detour in the past year. Judging his stats, though, his entire career has served as a downhill detour. In 29 starts and 31 overall appearances, Smith has completed 57.9 percent of his passes, averaged 6.8 yards per attempt, thrown eight more interceptions than touchdowns, and posted a passer rating of 72.3.

Smith started for the Jets for two seasons, meaning he had two years to establish himself as the starter. Like, if Derek Carr got punched in the Raiders' locker room today and missed the first month of the season, he'd definitely wouldn't be replaced by Matt McGloin. If Teddy Bridgewater got punched, he wouldn't be replaced by Shaun Hill. You get the point: Yes, Smith lost his job because he got punched, but he also lost his job because he wasn't very good at it.

That, of course, doesn't mean it's impossible for Smith to save his career. It might be impossible for that occur in New York, though, with Fitzpatrick in line to start this season, second-round pick Christian Hackenberg developing (in theory, at least) behind him, and Smith's contract expiring after the 2016 season.

Smith is looking at the careers of Brady, Warner, and Aikman, but his best hope might be to follow the career path of someone like Blaine Gabbert, who was cast aside by the Jaguars after three deeply disappointing years but now has a legitimate chance to win the 49ers' starting job. Or Smith might just want to hope Enemkpali, now with the Bills, manages to rearrange the Jets' depth chart, again, when the Bills host the Jets on Sept. 15.

The most likely scenario? Smith ends up being perpetually pissed, because regaining a starting job somewhere won't come easy.