The Darrelle Revis saga plays on this week with the Daily News reporting that the Jets were "actively shopping" the cornerback during the Scouting Combine in Indianapolis.
That comes on the heels of another report that no one from the team met with Revis' representatives during the meat market, which is odd since every team seems to meet with every agent at a pre-free agency tampering convention disguised as a chance for scouts to watch players that they've been scouting for months or years run in a straight line. What's more, Rex Ryan has reportedly been left out of the process, leaving new G.M. John Idzik and owner Woody Johnson running the show.
Naturally, this has been taken to mean that the Jets are hellbent on trading Revis. Ryan's the only one willing to go on the record and say he wants Revis on the team, but the narrative is that the others are doing an end run to ditch Revis as soon as possible.
Maybe so, but these things can take a lot of twists and turns before reaching their final conclusion. That's especially true in cases like this one, where there are five distinct options for how things could wind up for the Jets and Revis.
Option 1 - Trade Revis before the draft: In a perfect world, this is the option that works best for the Jets since they would be able to get new faces in April that would help turn the page on the Revis era immediately. This isn't a perfect world, though.
Revis hasn't been on a field since tearing his ACL, leaving teams to guess about his health and leaving the Jets to have to consider taking 75 cents on the dollar in a deal because they can't sell Revis' future by solely focusing on the past. Beyond that, this is a draft that's shaping up to be a fairly underpowered one so adding extra picks wouldn't necessarily do much to kickstart the rebuild in green.
Option 2 - Trade Revis this summer: This option gives Revis time to get healthy and restore at least some of his trade value, although any return in a deal would not be realized until the 2014 draft. That's not a bad thing if it brings back more value, although it would send an early white flag on the season.
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Option 3 - Trade Revis during the 2013 season: Similar to the second option, although with the increased benefit of time on the field to sell himself to other suitors as well as the possibility that injury/ineffectiveness somewhere else would lead someone to pay even more than the sticker price to grab Revis for their secondary. Going this option runs the risk that Revis is a disgruntled figure on the team as well as the risk of another injury that could destroy any trade value whatsoever.
Option 4 - Re-sign Revis: The Jets aren't showing much interest in this course of action, which makes sense given his injury and their dismal salary cap outlook. Not even paying lip service to the idea of Revis remaining with the team is a bit strange, and it suggests that we were probably heading for this kind of situation even if Revis hadn't gone down in a heap against Miami.
If Revis is back to being Revis, this is the best option because you don't win in the NFL by showing great players the door. If this is off the table, though, the Jets might as well make the trade whenever they get an offer that is even close because the final option isn't an option at all.
Option 5 - Let Revis walk as a free agent without any compensation: This might not prove to be an option so much as a last resort, but it's where this will head if the Jets aren't able to pull either of the other triggers available to them. If it gets to this point, they'll deserve every bit of mockery they will surely receive.
Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.
