OK, let's say for a moment you're right, and none of these corners have a big impact on winning games. Why do corners around the league get paid so much? Why did the Jets cave to Revis' contract demands when he held out a few years ago? If they have as small an impact as you're claiming, doesn't it make more sense to trade him for picks or players that can have a bigger impact? Look man, I've seen enough of your posts to know that you aren't an idiot and you know your football, but this is delusional. If you think TEs get open a lot now, imagine how much space they would have in the middle of the field if the Jets were forced to keep a safety over the top. It's a pretty simple equation to figure out, the more coverage area Revis gives you, the less you have to ask from your other players. This is directed at this whole board, not just you. STOP LOOKING AT JUST SACKS. A pass rush is about a lot more then just tackling a QB behind the LOS. My argument, just to be clear, is that Revis' ability to take away a team's best weapon or cover a huge part of the field makes it easier for the rest of the team to cover the other players, which in turn gives the pass rush more time to harass the QB. Rex Ryan wouldn't be calling a lot of these blitzes unless he had faith that he had someone on the back end that could take away a team's best weapon. I agree that QBs in general get too much credit for team success, but with that said I still think you're underselling Roethlisberger and Manning. They're both very good QBs, and when you remove the few players that have established themselves as the elite (Brady, Rodgers, Brees, P Manning) you could argue they are as good as anyone. While you obviously need a QB that can get it done, I think the other component is a pass defense. Pass defense = pass rush + pass coverage. They go hand in hand, and one feeds into the other. I think it's kind of absurd to argue that one is more important than the other.
What team has had the best record since 2001? What did they choose to do when their corners got too expensive? What team has the second best record since 2001? Why have they never paid a cornerback premium money? What team has the third best record since 2001? Why have they never had a Pro Bowl cornerback over that span? The answer to the first question is that Bill Belichik has consistently shipped the cornerbacks out when they were making star money and their contracts came up. He did it with Ty Law. He did it with Asante Samuel. He'll do it with the next guy that reaches star status at cornerback. The Patriots have won 134 games since 2001 mainly because they spend their money right and don't waste it in the defensive backfield. The answer to the second question is that the Rooneys understand that the place to spend money on defense in a 3-4 is in the linebacker corps. That's where the big salary has been most seasons in their system. They spend more money on the offensive side though. This is because to win a game you need to score points no matter how good your defense is. The Rooneys have never lost track of the fact that games start 0-0 and the defense does very little to put numbers in the first column. The answer to the third question is that the Colts didn't have the money to spend in the defensive secondary because they were spending so much money on skill position players and a couple of pass rushers. That lack of cap space in the defensive backfield seems kind of negligible in terms of the wins and losses, no? This is another example of a well run franchise understanding that the offense has to be good to win in the NFL. All 3 of the franchises at the top over the last decade have spent significantly more money on the offensive side of the ball. The top franchise actually moved aggressively to cut cap space on the defensive side of the ball to open up space to pay people on the offensive side. The Jets ranked 27th last year defending the TE. Are you suggesting that without Darrelle Revis they would have been a lot worse? When you get down to the bottom 20% in something the odds are pretty good that something you are doing has gone wrong in a big way. What the Jets were doing last year was paying their cornerbacks 17% of the cap and their safeties 4% of the cap. That's why they were 27th in the NFL in covering the TE (well, that and facing Tom Brady twice). Paying the cornerbacks did nothing to help them cover the TE's. Paying safeties better? That might have helped. No offense intended but you haven't watched the Jets enough in the Rex Ryan era to understand how they get their sacks. They rarely get coverage sacks. The vast majority of the sacks the Jets have gotten in the last 3 years have been fast and often from the blindside with a blitzer that was not picked up or a defensive end who got leverage and tossed his guy and came straight in. They don't get enough sacks at this point because those types of plays are fairly rare themselves and Rex and Pettine dropped way off on the blitzing after 2009. I'm not underselling Eli Manning at all. Would you take Eli over Brady? Would you take him over Brees? Would you take him over Rodgers? Would you take him over Peyton? Would you take him over Matt Ryan? Would you take him over Matthew Stafford? Would you take him over Ben Roethlisberger? Would you take him over Cam Newton? Would you take him over... You get my point, Eli is a good QB, not a great one. He's been in the right place at the right time on a couple of teams that won 9 and 10 games at least partly because he still loses games now and then with boneheaded picks. He's going to go to the hall of fame because he has won multiple super bowls and he's a Manning and people can't really separate out the myth of the great QB from the reality of a good one who is clutch. Roethlisberger is a different question. I think he's probably an elite QB trapped in a very effective team concept that does not want the QB to be so much the focal point that if he is not on top of his game the team fails. That said, repeat my Eli questions above and figure out where you'd actually take Roethlisberger over the current stars. he's probably going to be like #7 or 8 on that list not top 5. 8 of the last 10 Super Bowl winners have been in the top 6 in QB sacks. 6 of them have been in the top 3 in QB sacks. The two teams that won that were not in the top 6 in QB sacks had sucky pass defenses. Cornerbacks don't mean squat in winning the Super Bowl right now. Great QB, DE's and OLB's rule the roost. That's just what it is.
Yep. Case in point right here. Without Revis we couldn't get away with half the blitzing we did in 2009 & 2010.
I would say this is an excellent post, which it is in the sense that it is absolutely true, but it is also "excellent" for a reason that is somewhat less encouraging, and not to the discredit of its author. The problem is what this post says should be obvious to anyone who pays attention to football, who knows the game to at least a reasonable extent, and who for whatever reason is not driven by some anti-Revis agenda as some misled people here obviously are. How much is any one player supposed to give you? Top NT's can draw double coverage, but if the secondary can't cover anybody, any half decent Qb will get the ball away before the NT can do much damage. It's the same for any other position, too.
1. pats win games with offense not defense, and they havent won a superbowl since spygate 2. might be one of your more valid arguments, however the steelers defense happens to be run by one of the greatest coordinators to ever step onto a football field, and his claim to fame is called a 'zone blitz' so clearly, the defensive philosophy is one that relies less on coverage than rex's. they also have a guy in the backfield named troy polamalu, hes pretty damn good. 3. colts only won 1 superbowl, and peyton manning is one of the best qbs to ever play the game. they also have a 2 time pro-bowl safety in antoine bethea and used to have a guy named bob sanders who, when healthy of course, was a beast. considering that number one and two corners were ranked number 1 and 6 in the league, respectively, no, we probably would have been much better at covering the tight end, because the number 1 and 2 receivers would be putting up good numbers as well. but as it stands, our defense shuts those options down, and balls get forced over the middle to the tight end. if we had better safeties and faster linebackers, this wouldnt be a problem. and its still not that big a problem since we were ranked 5th overall in defense last year. the only reason the jets ahvent gotten coverage sacks is because we have lacked a legitimate pass rusher on our line. a guy like coples is going to live off of coverage sacks because he is going to end up beating the double team (something nobody has been able to do consistently) and forcing the pocket to collapse. eli played at an elite level last year, and is an incredibly clutch performer. ben is the focal point of the steelers offense. remember how bad the steelers get when he goes down? but to answer your question, i would absolutely take eli over the likles of matt ryan, matthew stafford, ben roethlesberger, cam newton. aaron rodgers is a bit of a toss up, and the others are better than eli statistically, but to dismiss eli's importance to his teams 2 superbowl titles is just wrong. its so simple figuring out how to win a superbowl isnt it? lol
Pretty much. It was kind of a "should I even post this?" kind of post. I'll be perfectly honest: I don't know much about football. I've only been watching it for a couple of years. I don't know much about different coverages, different styles of play (i.e. West Coast Offense), strategies, loop holes in the rulebook and a lot of the really minor details that you learn over time. But even with as little as I know I feel like a lot of the stuff is pretty common sense (i.e. the value of a CB). The sport is much more intricate than I thought before I started watching it, but it's not rocket science. As a side note: If anyone has any tips on how I can beef up my knowledge and understanding of the nitty-gritty of the game that'd be appreciated.
Drilling down to the intracacies of the game is all well and good, but that is not necessary to understand that a player like Revis who takes away so many options and areas in which to attempt a pass that he is doing substantially more than covering just one and any old one at that player on the opposing team. It should go without saying that the opponent's #1 wideout is their most dangerous and effective player on O. Taking that player out of the game is worth substantially more than subtracting a mere 1/11th of their offense.
But factually speaking this is just not true. You say the #1 WR is the most dangerous opponent and people think "CALVIN JOHNSON, ANDRE JOHNSON, LARRY FITZGERALD, OMGZ.." Most teams don't have a monster #1 WR. Most of the time Darrelle Revis is covering Stevie Johnson or an aging Chad Ochocinco or Brandon Marshall (who BTW is not a great WR since he lost Jay Cutler despite having some good games against Darrelle Revis.) The biggest threat on the Patriots last year was Tom Brady. This has been true forever at this point. Wes Welker caught a lot of passes and Rob Gronkowski caught a lot of passes and Aaron Hernandez caught a lot of passes and even Chad Ochocinco caught some. But the big threat was not nullified by Darrelle Revis because it was Tom Brady. The biggest threat on the Steelers in 2010 was not Hines Ward or Mike Wallace it was Ben Roethlisberger and Big Ben was not nullified by Darrelle Revis because he found the slot receiver Antonio Brown for the game-clinching reception. Darrelle Revis? Well, he was off covering somebody else, that'll be the story of his life when all is said and done is my guess. That's Champ Bailey's story and it's Nnamdi Asomugha's story and it will probably be Darrelle Revis story, and you can't find 3 better CB's than those guys in the modern era. The biggest threat on the Colts in 2009? Well by now my guess is you get my point. The Jets aren't going to lose to a big time #1 WR more than a small handful of times a decade. They won't lose to that guy at all if Rex Ryan is coaching the team. Both statements remain true whether Darrelle Revis is eating 12% of the cap or not.
you are discounting so many factors it is insane. tom brady is the biggest threat on the pats. thats true, but you are forgetting that when playing the jets, brady has to account for where revis is on the field and adjust to that. same with ben, or peyton, or drew, or any other big name qb you can think of. revis doesnt only play the number one receiver, although that is his specialty. so, you have to know where revis is at all times as a qb, dont forget how good he is in run support, or tackling guys that have already been beaten before the first down marker. which is another thing qbs have to think about. of course, these qbs are usually good enough to adjust, but thats a whole hell of a lot extra to think about as a qb. just one thing you are completely ignoring
and then there's this, noted without comment: Adam Schefter @AdamSchefter Please welcome the agents of Darrelle Revis to Twitter, @SchwartzFeinsod. Please direct any comments on Revis to them.
I'm not ignoring anything here. We keep losing the big game because we can't cover everybody and we don't have the pressure to force the QB into a bad throw. Darrelle Revis doesn't impact that at all. He's completely neutral in the question of whether or not the QB can find somebody else to throw to in time. So far the QB's haven't had a lot of trouble doing that in crunch time against us. I'm just saying it is nuts to build your franchise around a player who doesn't control anything but the man in front of him. It is the definition of futility to do that. Even if the NFL opens things up in a huge way and this becomes like Arena Football the Jets will be better off not paying Darrelle Revis a huge chunk of cash. So what if he can control his man, everybody else is going to have less control over their guy and the Jets will just be playing and losing 10-on-10 instead of 11-on-11. What the Jets will need in that situation is whatever the pass rush turns into and lots of it.
Imagine this defense w/o revis locking down the opponents biggest weapon every week? We wouldn't have been close to a title game or SB. I get your point but this may be one of the best ever to play corner and he's a weapon no one else has.
99% of the time Qb's either hand it off or throw it to someone else. Come on, man, you know that is what I was talking about. Even on NE Welker, the wideout, had 122 regular season catches compared to 90 for Gronkowski, who is one of the better if not best TE's in the game right now. I appreciate that NE is a division opponent, but you still are playing 14 games a year against teams that do not have their combination of Gronkowski and Hernandez. The monster wideout point is beside the point - most teams cover the opponent's #1 wideout with some kind of double coverage. The Jets do not have to do that because they have Revis. This allows the whole rest of the Jet D to be more flexible. You hold Revis to an unreasonable standard by ignoring that it is a team game. And also that this team has a top five D. Would it be that without Revis? No. Funnily enough, for someone such as yourself who is so down on the Jet FO, the obvious implication of your cap space argument is that the Jets can and should trade him so that they can make better use of the cap space elsewhere. This FO will do that??? Ever heard of a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush? THe devil you know is better than the devil you don't know? This Jet D, the one the team has right now, is built around having three very solid players, and one nearly so, those being Revis, Cro and Harris. Then there is Pouha, who had a very good year last year. Some of the rest might be a bit above average, and some are less than that. Yet it is a top 5 D. Three points: One is I have less than an acceptable level of confidence that the Jets FO could engineer a trade, get good value, and turn around and effectively put that value to better use. Do you honestly have a high confidence level they could pull ALL of that off? Second is you say Revis takes 12% of the cap. I believe you are in error. According to a site called NY Jets Cap Space, Revis is listed as having a cap value of $11.5 mil against a cap limit of over $130mil. That is closer to 8% than 12%. Interestingly for this year that site lists David Harris as having a higher cap value, and you don't complain about him, when he is not as good a player as Revis. Third, it is not practical to think that a roster can be made up of players who can all be around the same level, hopefully somewhat above average. In a given year, in a given market, there will simply not be a nice choice of players at the specific positions you want to upgrade to attain that level. You're better off accepting the need to pay for some very good players, and hopefully finding a way to use them to good effect, making your overall roster a better one. No team I can think of is successful without some star players on the squad. And not just at Qb, either. The Jets have Revis, Cro, Harris, and also Holmes, Mangold and Ferguson. These are the players they can build a successful team around, so long as Sanchez does not hold them back. It's really, as I have been saying, a problem with the O, not the D. Here's the link to the site. http://nyjetscap.com/salary.html
Are you kidding me here? In 2010 at the start of the season Darrelle Revis goes down with a hamstring against the Pats after letting Randy Moss score a 34 yard TD and then the Jets not only win that game but they win the next two against Miami and Buffalo with Revis out? It's hysteria man. Look at the bones. When Nick Mangold went out the Jets offense was shaky and stuttering but when Revis went out there were no hitches. That's the situation in a nutshell.
if our offense were scoring tons of points, i might (MIGHT) agree with you, but the fact of the matter is that this teams recent flirtations with success (2 AFC champ game appearances) have been due to the defense and its ability to do just what you are claiming it cannot. without revis this team likely doesnt make the playoffs.
Nick Mangold went down in that same Pats game and the jets wound up winning fairley easily in the 2nd half. We had one good half w/o Revis, Marshall killed us in Miami then we played a bad Bills team. We got a decent raider team(pre injuries) in oak then at Baltimore w/o mangold and we had no backup due to Turner being out. If our D didn't have Revis in '09 & '10 there's no way w/ our lack of pass rush that we make 1 title game let alone two.
Again. I don't think you can prove that for 2010 and 2009 was like an accident. We got lucky with a wild-and-crazy blitz scheme that the NFL couldn't pick up all season, a couple of teams tanked for us at the end because they had no reason to win, every other team we were going against for a playoff spot lost out, the offense finally became coherent when the reins were taken away from Schotty and handed to Callahan, etc. Then Peyton Manning figured out how to deal with the blitz and we lost a DB to injury and it all came tumbling down. There's a reason we weren't blitz-happy in 2010 and it was not just that Darrelle Revis hobbled himself for the first half of the season by holding out. It was also that the NFL had figured out how to deal with all that pressure.
this also, in the 2010 wild card game against the colts, revis held reggie wayne to one catch for one yard. im sure that had little to do with the win...
2009 like an accident with darrelle ruining chad johnsons day. the bengals did NOT lay down for the jets. the colts might have, but oh well. now you are just looking for reasons to say darrelle isnt important to the defense. so, they figured out the blitz scheme that, in 2009, was only possible because revis was in man coverage against hte number one and taking him out of the game? and now the jets have decided to address the issue of not having a prominent pass rusher on the line, and suddenly having revis isnt going to mean a thing? there are ways to beat a good pass rush, just like there are ways to beat good coverage, good run d, etc. but you cant look at the jets defense and not recognize that having good to great corners is a necessity.
I'm not arguing that you don't need good corners. I'm arguing that at his cap price Darrelle Revis is overkill and the Jets would be much better off with some of that money in the center of the field and closer to the line of scrimmage. There's no rational counter-argument here. The Jets have waaaaaay too much money on the edge of the field in the defensive scondary. They need more of that money where games are really won and lost, in the middle of the field and closer to the line of scrimmage. The cap space should be going to players that can get effect the offensive backfield not play in the defensive backfield.
