The Jets, right from the moment Rex Ryan barreled through the door, haven’t been shy about talking the talk, and they keep telling us this is the year they walk the walk back to the Super Bowl 42 years after Joe Namath.
But it is time for the front office to walk the walk and strike a deal with Darrelle Revis, sooner rather than later, because there is no way Ryan will be walking the walk into the Oval Office to shake hands with the president if Woody Johnson and Mike Tannenbaum do not walk the walk back into the heart of the best player on their team.
“I’m hurt,” Revis told The Post yesterday at his locker. “When somebody promises you something, and don’t live up to their word — yes.”
Revis is hurt because he claims that Tannenbaum told him face to face in April that he deserves to be the NFL’s highest-paid cornerback. (Per club policy, Tannenbaum does not discuss private conversations). Ryan only thought Revis was the defensive MVP last year.
The Jets need to put their money where their mouths are.
Revis — and Nick Mangold — did the right thing by showing up for the mandatory minicamp yesterday. Revis did the wrong thing by making a statement when he begged out at the end of the morning practice with what he laughingly described as “lightheadedness” and put Ryan in the awkward position of learning about it from the media.
Both sides should stop playing games, pronto.
The Jets should show Revis the money — more money than any cornerback not named Nnamdi Asomugha ($15.1 per).
Revis, for the sake of the Jets having enough money for Mangold, D’Brickashaw Ferguson and David Harris, should back off his desire to be the highest-paid cornerback in the league and acknowledge that Al Davis set the bar too high on Asomugha.
Stop the madness and stop sabotaging a Super season now!
You can’t put your franchise front and center on “Hard Knocks” if you are going to get your own core players suspecting you are standing guard over Fort Knox.
The Jets will never sniff a Super Bowl if their best player becomes a distraction and there is a widespread lack of trust between the players and the front office.
It would have been folly for the Jets not to approach Revis with the intentions of locking him up long term now that he has outplayed his current contract.
It is also folly to send him a proposal with zero guaranteed money.
“To me, it’s like an insult,” Revis said.
The Post has a solution:
Champ Bailey’s $9 million average salary with the Broncos represented 11.1 percent of the league’s $80.58 million salary cap in 2004, when he signed his new deal. The salary cap last year was $128 million and likely would have risen to $135 million or so in 2010.
A similar compromise would leapfrog Revis ahead of the pack of corners in the $9 million to $10 million yearly range and into Mr. Asomugha’s neighborhood.
If Revis refuses to surrender his fight to be the highest-paid cornerback, if the Jets refuse to budge from their insistence that Asomugha’s contract is an aberration, then this has the makings of a long, hot summer that will test Ryan.
I asked Revis if he would accept a deal that would leave him near Asomugha but not No. 1.
“I don’t know, I have to talk to my team [agents] about that,” Revis said. “It’s not my fault that Nnamdi set the bar.”
Revis, who is due to make $1 million this season, has the hammer and he’s using it. The hammer Leon Washington lost when he broke his leg.
“The NFL stands for Not For Long, so I have to get my guaranteed money, and I have to fight for what I’m fighting for,” Revis said.
Ryan’s gut feeling is a resolution before training camp. Revis? Not so sure.
But he does not want to be alone on Revis Island.
“I’m a team player, let’s do this thing right,” he said.