Just when you thought it was safe to sit back, check out the draft and actually convince yourself that the Jets were a football team and not a soap opera, Darrelle Revis' contract re-enters the picture.
Two years after Revis spent the majority of the summer in a contentious hold out with the Jets, it looks like the stage is set for another standoff. The reason why is the contract that Revis signed when that holdout finally came to an end.
Revis himself warned that the deal, a frontloaded contract that left him making $13.5 million total in 2012 and 2013, was one that he was likely to feel paid him less than he was worth at this point in time and he predicted that the two sides would be back at the negotiating table this year. The Jets acted shocked at the time, but Revis was prescient and he sent a message Monday that things might play out exactly the same way this time around.
"I just don’t know. I'm not saying I am going to hold out; I'm not saying I'm not going to hold out," Revis said.
The Jets passed on an opportunity to comment on Revis' contract last week, but that uncharacteristic silence probably won't serve them all that well now that Revis has thrown down the gauntlet. They should actually be able to win the PR war this time around.
In 2010, Revis was terribly underpaid and he was playing for a coach who never missed a chance to hype him up as the best defensive player in all of football. The Jets might not have liked Revis wanting a new deal with two years left on his current one, but it was hard to sympathize with them because they were doing their best to feed the monster.
This time, though, Revis is coming off two years where he was exceptionally well-paid and it has been just two years since he had the opportunity to address his contract. If he didn't want a deal that paid him less in these two seasons, there was no gun to his head forcing him to sign it since he had already missed almost all of training camp while holding out.
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Not that the Jets are totally blameless for allowing things to get to this point. It didn't take a crystal ball to see where this was heading when Revis signed the contract, but the Jets were so desperate to get the deal done in time to have Revis in their new stadium that they didn't think about the consequences beyond the moment.
Sound familiar? Of course it does because it is on page one of the Jets operating manual to think only of today and never about tomorrow.
Having said that, the Jets seem to have the high ground in every possible way here with one exception. Without Revis, the team's got little shot of doing anything other than angering their fans and slipping back into irrelevance.
That's a fate worse than death to these Jets and it's a good bet that Revis knows it. And that means we haven't heard anything close to the last of this.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
