Exclusive behind-the-scenes details of 2 a.m. meeting that helped end Revis holdout

Exclusive behind-the-scenes details of 2 a.m. meeting that helped end Revis holdout »

By Manish Mehta

Michelle Ryan let the man into the family home just before 2 a.m. last Friday. She offered him something to drink, but he brought his own bottled water.

A few minutes later, her husband walked through the front door after a long day's work in Philadelphia.

The day before Jets coach Rex Ryan flew down to Florida with owner Woody Johnson to meet with holdout Darrelle Revis -- and two days before the team agreed to a 4-year, $46 million deal that ended a 36-day impasse with the All-Pro cornerback -- two men sat at a kitchen table in the middle of the night in Summit, N.J.

There were four chairs. Revis' agent Neil Schwartz took a seat. Ryan sat to his right. Schwartz brought a present for the coach -- a green-and-white No. 24 jersey -- and placed it over the chair back directly across Ryan.

"So there were three of us at the meeting: Rex, myself and Revis -- in jersey only," Schwartz remembered with a laugh.

Ryan looked at the man who had made his life a living hell over the past month and smiled.

"You're killing me," the coach said.

The next two hours set in motion a chain of events that would eventually bring Revis back to his team. Hours after the Jets' 21-17 win over the Eagles in the final preseason game on Sept. 2, Ryan listened to Schwartz, trying to make sense of why the contract mess had lasted so long.

"He wanted to make sure I saw their proposal," Ryan said. "It wasn't like I was doing any negotiating. Maybe he negotiated with my wife before I got there, I don't know."

Every time Schwartz spoke, he turned and pointed to the jersey draped over the chair as if Revis were sitting there with them. The star cornerback, of course, was a thousand miles away just outside Fort Lauderdale, hopeful for a breakthrough.

"The good thing about it was that there was a possibility at that point," Revis said in a quiet moment Friday. "They said, 'Hey, we're going to meet Rex at 2 a.m.' I'm like, okay. I'll be asleep.'"

Schwartz and Ryan were brought together by a mutual friend. When the two spoke last Thursday morning, Schwartz asked the coach if they could meet after the Eagles game. Time was of the essence. Something -- no matter how unorthodox -- needed to be done.

Ryan called Schwartz as the team bus headed back to Florham Park. The coach picked up his car at the team facility and went home, where Schwartz -- who left his home in Rockland County at 1 a.m. -- was waiting for him.

The agent explained the thought process behind his proposal and addressed the potential issues and concerns the team might have. Ryan asked questions.

"I think he now understood where we were coming from," Schwartz said. "I'm not saying he agreed with it. He just saw it from a different perspective."

They spoke about more than the contract, however. "I think we talked about baseball as much as we did football," Ryan said.

Schwartz and Ryan shared the same hobby: Collecting single-signed baseballs. Ryan expressed his desire to get a Satchel Paige autographed ball one day.

Although Ryan didn't do any negotiating, the encounter proved critical.

"That was the first of the chain of events that prompted this deal to get done," Schwartz said. "I truly believe that. It opened up the logjam. It got us back on the right track, because now everyone understood where everyone was at… It got everyone focused."

Ryan relayed the details of the meeting to Johnson and general manager Mike Tannenbaum later that morning. The coach called Schwartz and proposed the idea of flying down to Florida on Saturday afternoon to meet with his star cornerback and his family.

Schwartz signed off.

On Saturday, Ryan and Johnson flew south to get their man. Both sides spent the better part of Sunday trying to make it work. After the back-and-forth, after Ryan's now infamous tantrum, they finally struck a deal just before midnight on Sunday.

While the Florida trip grabbed the headlines, the meeting between Ryan and Schwartz in the early hours of Friday was the real breakthrough. Before the men shook hands and parted ways just before 4 a.m., Ryan made it clear that he couldn't accept Schwartz's present.

"Neil, I don't want the jersey," Ryan said, turning serious. "I want him."

Two surreal days later, he got his wish.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/jets/2010/09/exclusive-behind-the-scenes-de.html#ixzz0zFigy4UZ

Rex not worried about exposing game plan on 'Hard Knocks' »

By Kevin Armstrong

Rex Ryan dismissed Ravens offensive coordinator Cam Cameron's comments that he learned a lot about the Jets' schemes by watching episodes of "Hard Knocks".

"What are you going to learn?" Ryan asked. "You guys saw it. What did you get out of it?"

Ryan, the Ravens' former defensive coordinator, laughed off concerns that his open-door approach to the reality cameras could have compromised his team's Week 1 game plan.

"I was like, well you got the playbook sitting right there," Ryan said, referring to the fact that his former team's sets are similar to the ones he ran while defensive coordinator in Baltimore. "There might be something in the playbook that's more revealing than Hard Knocks."

Cameron originally told Baltimore reporters, "There was probably a lot revealed in that strategically, the way I viewed it … There was a lot of stuff in there strategically."

Cameron would not go so far as to say how useful in the information would be.

"I'm not going to say that yet," Cameron said.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/jets/2010/09/rex-not-worried-about-exposing.html#ixzz0zFikQGup