This is the reason the big 4 are going to be clamoring for long-term deals. The rest is window dressing:
The Leon example is a good example of a player being greedy and stupid. Leon had a reasonable offer and he wanted to hold out for Sproles type money. If Revis would agree to a 13m/yr contract that is 78M. He could strike that deal tomorrow. That would take care of his family and the rest of Uganda. If he going to let his ego get in the way of making a deal that is good for both parties and he breaks his leg like Leon, then he will kick himself in the ass like Leon. If he strikes a fair deal this year he gets: a. to play on a contender (big endorsement opportunity) b. the biggest market in the US (huge endorsement opportunity) c. opportunity to negotiate for another big contact when he is 28/29 and can still get a sizable third deal if he is able to keep up his play. d. at ton of money e. security if he has a career ending injury. If Revis doesn't strike a reasonable deal, he is a moron. He will belong to the Jets for 2-4 more years regardless. He has no leverage and he should take what he can get. 78M vs 90M, really Darelle? Really?
SIGN REVIS!!!! Think of the JETS last year w/ No Revis. Playoffs? Playoffs? Pfffft! We woulda been a Sub .500 team w/ No Revis.
or last year without Mangold... because we used the money to sign Revis. On the other hand last year without Revis but with Cromartie and Wilson... maybe playoffs is not out of reach, and maybe PM has more problems finding his #2 in the final game.
Totally agree abyz. While what happened to Leon has happened before, Leons was pretty extreme. A player who was offered a long term, very good money deal thinks he is owed a bit more...declines to sign...and has a career threatening injury. Leon is then worth much less until he reproves himself. It happened right in front of every guy looking for an extension. The Jets are getting bit by the Leon bug worse than most teams because its so fresh in their minds. Sadly, the player is right...but its the system...not the Jets. The Jones argument is bullshit though. Jones went to the Chiefs and without a great offensive line...will be exposed as a decent back at this stage in his career..nothing more. The Jets handled the Jones situation the way any solid front office would have handled it. The only thing that bothers me is that the Jet organization is developing a reputation with the players that there is no loyalty unless you have 15 kids with 15 different mothers...and we need you to have a good year THIS year...and we will probably throw you under the bus next year too. Im not saying I agree with that assessment but you can make a valid argument as a player that this might be true.
We don't know what Leon was offered. Leon never said what he was offered. The reports of the Jets offers were always at the end of the article and without attribution. If Leon had come right out and said, "look they're offering me 2 million a year and I think I'm worth more than that" then we'd have something to go on, but instead we have the writers of the various articles all saying 2 million to 2.5 as an add-on at the end. I'm tired of agents manipulating things to make the Jets look bad. Sometimes the Jets do make mistakes but I highly doubt that they're guilty of all the ones we think they are. I do think that there are a few agents who represent Jets who are more likely to cause this kind of problem than other agents. If you look at where most of the noise has been over the last half decade or so you usually find these guys on the other side of the bargain (or lack thereof). It's unfortunate that Darrelle Revis has the same agents that Pete Kendall and Chris Baker did, because I guarantee you those guys are not happy with the way the two earlier situations played out for their clients. Using Revis as a blunt instrument against the Jets is a bad idea though. It's not in his best interests at all and it will likely hurt the team. Revis is the one who needs to get this though, based on the history his agents won't get it or if they do won't care.
Regardless of what Leon was offered..not signing cost him millions of dollars. While I agree with a lot of your post B, this blaming of agents is starting to get on my nerves (not from you..but by the press etc). Its alarming...amazing...how players are dragged down these roads by agents that are not even needed if you think about it. If you broke it down by percentages, I would think there are a lot more successful Leon Washington stories then what happened to Leon. Problem is that it did happen..and DBRICK,Harris,Revis and Mangold were all there to visually witness it.
Leon had the opportunity to sign a long-term deal with the Jets. What the numbers were on the actual offer isn't clear and he may well have been right to not sign the deal. He was however taking a chance by going out there in the walk year of his deal with no coverage moving forward. He apparently was also determined to milk his free agent opportunity for the maximum possible value. Those two facts are both true and he lost the gamble. That's not the Jets fault. It's his fault. Darrelle Revis is in a much better situation than Leon was in. He has a pretty solid guarantee of at least 5 million dollars for 2011 even if he gets hurt, because I doubt the Jets would fail to exercise that option and let him go free even if he got hurt in 2010. If Revis is really worried about long-term security and wants a nice payday now then he should negotiate his best deal and sign it. Yes, he saw what happened to Leon. Did he take away any lessons from that? I can see him playing under his old contract and then totally breaking the bank in 2013 and being a very happy camper. I can also see him playing under his old contract and then totally breaking his leg next season and being very unhappy. The odds are probably 90/10 in his favor. He's the only one that knows where he lies on the risk aversion scale in this calculation. Expecting the Jets to bail him out by giving him the happy camper contract now is just unreasonable and in the end it will get him traded somewhere in the next year if he sticks to it - and the new team won't give him the happy camper contract either unless that's where the market goes independent of him. Revis needs to be a free agent, or on the verge of free agency, if he's going to be the one to establish the market for his services. Until that time he has a contract and the Jets would be nuts to roll over for him and give him a contract of the type he is looking for. Can you imagine what Mark Sanchez will do to the Jets in a year or two if he establishes himself if he sees them roll over for Revis now?
I agree with this post...except the fact of Revis needing to be in the driver seat to establish the market. Revis has a couple of things on his side to get that deal well before becoming a free agent. Without listing all of them...he has the reputation of Jet front office, right or wrong, on his side. The Jets are in a bad spot with him right now. Even if he is saying and doing the wrong things...the Jets are going to have to pay him close to what hes asking. Its a signal to the rest of them that they will get deals done and that the Jets are serious about "keeping the core four" mantra we keep hearing about. While the proper thing to do is to take care of those that will be free agents sooner rather than later...Revis has forced the Jets to take care of him first. What should have been a no brainer of taking care of those that are free agents after this year, Revis will be paid first..and that you can count on. I used the phrase "Jets front office reputation" a bunch of times that last couple days. While I completely disagree with the notion the front office deserves the label...it is out there. The players are beginning to believe it. Right or wrong, the Jets need to squash it...and Revis is the winner.
If the Jets are really backed into a corner at this point then they need to go renegotiate Harris and sign Mangold to an extension and then back off and see where things settle. Darrelle Revis isn't due unless he pushes to the head of the line, and if he does that and gets away with it then the Jets are going to be really unhappy with where things stand in a season or two as everybody else and their agents storm the castle. Doing a few small things to preserve the piece with Revis is ok but giving in to him will just tell every player the Jets have that the Jets don't really have them any more. Once they become good they have the Jets, contract or no.
The thing I'm worried about with the Revis contract negotiations is that if the Jets FO does give in and pays him 15+ a year, it sets the precedent for Mangold, Brick, and Harris to ask for astronomical contracts because Revis got his. I'm beginning to come to terms with one of these four pillars of the Jets (or more) not being with the team after next season.
I totally agree with this post if the Jets had done this as soon as the off season began but now have decided to open up with Revis first. Thats the problem with your theory. You are dead on correct. Problem is that now, the Jets have the Revis thing hanging over their head because they decided to wait on the others and take care of him first. Just so we are on the same page....Im not agreeing with Revis. I could give two craps about his latest demand. Im more in to the locker room perspective and the team psychology because the Jets have not done well making their own feel wanted. Right or wrong..with all the good Tanny has done...he has not demonstrated to the team that taking care of true Jets is a strong suit. The only thing they have demonstrated is the ability to make life easier for a Holmes or Cromartie. Rewarding a LT while dropping their leading rusher. All great moves in my opinion..unless you are a Jet player. It has a bit of a stink to it.
I disagree with this general premise. The Jets renegotiated Kerry Rhodes and Jerrico Cotchery when it became clear that they had outplayed their 4th round contracts. When Brandon Moore's deal reached the years that were way over market (7 million roster bonus for 2009) they released him and then immediately re-signed him to a 4 year $16 million dollar deal with $10 million in guarantees. Brandon Moore is a solid guard but he's also the kind of guy who gets let go in crunches after 30 and the Jets gave him $10 million in guarantees - forestalling any shenanigans on their part in future seasons. They also evenly distributed the salary so that they wouldn't have a bubble year force their hand again. The Jets reworked things for Laveranues Coles several times and always gave him what he was asking for in the end, even when that was his release. They worked around Chad Pennington's contract in any number of years when they could have asked him to reduce it for cap purposes, like the Pats did with Brady, and paid him even though he was hurt or ineffective half the seasons he played for them. It really comes down to the agents involved. There are a few people that Jets cannot agree on deals with and unfortunately the reaction to that has been a propaganda campaign by those people against the Jet's FO. If not countered that campaign will probably be successful in the end in painting the Jets as uniformly harsh to their own players when in fact the record says they are very balanced in how they treat them. Finally, the Jets have made mistakes in the past. They have done things that in some cases bordered on unprofessional conduct (Kendall rooming with the rookies, Chris Baker given a bogus contract they had no intention of fulfilling) and they're going to take some flak for those mistakes. It is higly unfortunate that the two incidents above both occurred with clients of Darrelle Revis current agents. Anybody else see a connection between Kendall, Baker and now Revis turning into a major problem?
The problem with giving Revis more money without any extra years is that anyone who outperforms their contract can then ask for a raise without being locked uop for extra years. Giving raises like that opens up pandoras box,so while it looks good on paper, futuure young stars would then have the Jets by the balls and have this precedent to back them up. Sorry about typos, posting from my phone.
The problem with giving Revis more money without any extra years is that anyone who outperforms their contract can then ask for a raise without being locked uop for extra years. Giving raises like that opens up pandoras box,so while it looks good on paper, futuure young stars would then have the Jets by the balls and have this precedent to back them up. Sorry about typos, posting from my phone.
i absolutely see this being a problem. these guys were a massive issue with the kendall situation. baker switched to them when he was unhappy with how his negotiations with the jets were going as well. they like to play hardball with the organization and advise their clients to hold out and act up (remember the baker parking spot story?) having revis represented by these guys gives me an uneasy feeling about his future with the jets. tanny is not the kind of guy who caves to pressure. he will send revis packing if things get too out of hand.
I tend to agree with this. I think the dynamics of the negotiations are likely to be off-kilter until things are resolved and I doubt the Jets can actually afford the repercussions that giving Revis his high-end deal now would create. In the past Tannenbaum has resolved this type of issue by removing the player from the team. The wild card of course is that Revis is the most talented player the organization has (not most valuable - which would be Sanchez) and so it is going to be a hard decision to make in the end. Do you roll over for Revis and hope that everybody else understands he's an exception or do you stick to the rules that everybody else plays by and eventually make a move that weakens the current team to preserve the overall structure? NFL teams as a whole, good, bad and mediocre, have come down on the side of letting the cornerback go when push comes to shove. Deion Sanders played for multiple teams as probably the best corner in football. Champ Bailey was traded as his initial contract was nearing it's end, and of course both Ty Law and Asante Samuel found new addresses when Belichik would not pay top dollar for their services. The exception to the rule is the Raiders who gave Asomugha a huge contract to keep him. I think I lean with the teams above and not the Raiders.
