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IK Enemkpali came to the Buffalo Bills on August 12 with a bit of a checkered past, considering that he had been released by the New York Jets the day prior for punching quarterback Geno Smith in the face. On Wednesday evening, ESPN reported on an incident from Enemkpali's college career that, to put it mildly, is even more bizarre.
Per the report, in the fall of 2011, while Enemkpali was serving a suspension for hitting an off-duty police officer in a bar, Enemkpali was lured to a stranger's home by a promise of oral sex via Facebook. When he arrived at the home, a figure fully cloaked in a blanket approached him, and Enemkpali, sufficiently spooked, left the premises. Another Facebook promise eventually prompted his return, however, where he then discovered that the blanketed figure was a man. He punched said man in the face and left.
Come to find out, the man was a pastor in Louisiana that, allegedly, had been hoping to capitalize on Enemkpali's off-field issue and suspension by extorting money out of him. Enemkpali, who broke the man's teeth with his punch, offered the man $500, but after being asked for double that, he took the matter to police. Eventually, the matter was dropped, and Enemkpali did not press charges. He required surgery to repair the hand he injured in this incident.
Now you know about a weird thing that happened to Enemkpali was a 20-year-old college sophomore. It's probably a thing that led many teams to drop Enemkpali on their draft boards - or remove him from it entirely - in the lead-up to the 2014 NFL Draft. Given the Smith incident that caused his ouster from the Jets, it's fair to wonder if Enemkpali, now 24, still has a tendency to put himself in bad situations off the field. (It's also fair to say that he throws a very effective punch.)
In his two weeks with the Bills to date, Enemkpali has seen more playing time on defense than any other Bills defender, and is now considered a very strong bet to be playing defense for Rex Ryan in 2015.