“Honestly, we’re here for our Super Bowl. If we don’t get there, nothing else matters.” – Kris Jenkins
“Don’t be timid about saying it. That’s your goal. Write it down. Say it. Read it. Talk about it. It’s fine. It’s not false bravado. It’s real and that’s what we want. I think we have the players to do it.” – Mark Sanchez
“Anything short of the obvious is a disappointment. At the end of the day, to beat the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship or to beat the Saints or Vikings, we have to put it all together. It’s not enough just to have the manpower on paper.” – Braylon Edwards
“This is definitely different than any other year I’ve been in. It’s a true sense of Super Bowl or bust. This team is built for that. It’s been talked about over and over again. Guys understand that.” – Brandon Moore
These aren’t the words of a team that thinks they have a chance to make it to the Super Bowl, just like any of the other 31 NFL organizations. These are the assertions of a football club that is supremely confident it will be representing the AFC at Cowboys Stadium come February 6, 2011.
However, it can be said with no equivocation that Super Bowl talk for any team is simply empty rhetoric if they are without the services of their best player; and for the New York Jets that individual is cornerback Darrelle Revis.
As reported here, in a dramatic turn of events, the crown jewel of Gang Green’s top ranked defense has decided to hold out of training camp due to a contract dispute. Revis failed to attend the team's conditioning test on Sunday morning and officially became a holdout when he missed the team's mandatory meeting Sunday evening in Cortland.
By electing to hold out until his contract is restructured, Revis will be fined $16,523 a day by the Jets and has waived approximately $20 million in guaranteed salary for the 2011 and 2012 seasons.
The dispute stems from the fact that Revis is scheduled to make $1 million in the fourth year of his six-year rookie deal, making him one of the lowest-paid defensive backs on the Jets. Revis, the 2009 AFC Defensive Player of the Year, is looking to become the NFL’s highest-paid cornerback, a distinction that belongs to Oakland Raiders defensive stand-out Nnamdi Asomugha, who will be making $15 million this season after signing a $45 million contract extension last year.
Make no mistake about it; this is a game of chicken that the New York Jets front office is destined to lose as Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones found out the hard way in the early 1990’s.
Prior to the 1993 season, after rushing for 1,713 yards, scoring 19 touchdowns and leading Dallas to their first Super Bowl victory in fifteen years, Emmitt Smith held out for over two months and the Cowboys started the season 0-2 before a proud Jerry Jones finally opened his wallet to make Smith the highest-paid running back in NFL history at the time. Smith responded by keying another victorious run to the Super Bowl for Dallas while winning the Associated Press Most Valuable Player Award in the process.
Everything the Cowboys did on offense in the 1990’s was triggered by their ability to effectively run the football with Emmitt Smith, just as everything the Jets do on defense is predicated on Darrelle Revis’ uncanny knack to shut down the opposing player’s best receiving threat; and no one in the league does it better.
When asked his thoughts on Revis finishing second to Green Bay Packers cornerback Charles Woodson for the 2009 NFL Defensive Player of the Year Award, Jets head coach Rex Ryan said, "This, in my opinion, was the best year a corner has ever had, the most impact a corner has ever had in the National Football League. That's my opinion. Apparently, that wasn't how everybody felt.”
Ryan also went on to say, "A number that I think would be interesting would be eight, and no, that’s not the amount of touchdown passes that Green Bay gave up against Arizona. That is the number of touchdown passes we gave up all season, and the biggest reason for that is Darrelle Revis."
Now Ryan may have given Revis a more favorable position at the negotiating table with those glowing comments, but he was merely being truthful about the main reason why Gang Green finished with the NFL’s top ranked passing defense last season. And in only his fourth season in the league, as scary as it sounds, Revis, a two-time Pro Bowl selection, can only get better.
As the fifth most valuable team in the NFL and with the highly anticipated move into a new stadium, there is absolutely no reason why the Jets should continue playing hard ball with the one of the cornerstones of their franchise.
Therefore, it’s time for the Jets to ante up before Revis’ holdout becomes a public relations nightmare and the team begins writing checks that their bodies won’t be able to cash.
Click here to read the original article on Examiner.com, which includes relevant links and a special video presentation featuring Darrelle Revis.
Jets’ Super Bowl Talk Means Nothing without Darrelle Revis
