Darrelle Revis Belongs In The Hall Of Fame Off His Jets Career Alone
Being a fan of the New York Jets for the past 20+ years of my life has not been fun by any means. I don’t need to explain in detail for you guys to understand where I’m coming from. More often than not, the Jets suck.
Occasionally we have a solid year and my poor, damaged heart falls in love with the squad, usually led by some mediocre quarterback that the front office took a flier on because we’re too shitty of a franchise to entice anyone with actual talent to come and play for us.
There was that year when Favre came and the Jets looked like they might be able to make some noise in the playoffs, but even then the wheels came off by week 11 and by the end of the season everything was back to normal. Mark Sanchez came and went. I’m not really sure how to classify his Jets tenure other than to say looking back on my support for him in the green and white, I’m just as embarrassed for thinking he could be a legit, super bowl winning quarterback as I am for texting friends and family members about #Kony2012 because I thought it was a touching, powerful movement and wanted to be apart of it. In both cases, nothing good or significant really actually happened.
One of the few aspects of being a Jets fan that I still find joy in is thinking about Darrelle Revis and his reign as the most dominant defensive player in the NFL during his first go-around in the Meadowlands.
Revis’ talent was something that all Jets fans could hang their hat on. It was the one argument we could win. He gave us hope that maybe we’d get lucky and drunkenly stumble on another stud in the draft and actually beat the Patriots and maybe even win a Super Bowl.
Obviously that didn’t happen, but as I sit here thinking back on what it was like rooting for those Jets teams anchored by Revis and the sex-addicted Antonio Cromartie in the secondary, I can’t help but feel proud and grateful for even getting to experience it. He used to just fucking embarrass dudes on the field. Guys like Chad Johnson used to show up after chirping all week how they weren’t gonna get shutdown by Revis, only to end the game with like 2 receptions for 25 yards and a bruised ego.
This blog would be amiss without mentioning the holdouts and how he dicked around the Jets front office like they were a tinder girl who hates her father, but even that stuff didn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth. He was the best player at his position and deserved to compensated as such. I’ll never forget being in college, frantically scouring Twitter waiting for the news to break that Revis had ended his holdout and would continue to suit up for the Jets.
The night the news broke, I was at a house party on campus. One of those college parties where a basement gets filled up to the gills with drunk kids and smoke and booze and the temperature in the house gets so hot you can’t tell if you’re having a stroke or having fun.
I don’t remember much about the party, or who I was with, or what I was doing, but I do remember finding out that Revis had agreed to end the holdout and just throwing my arms up and going nuts. It played because everyone else was also doing that, but for them it had nothing to do with being a fan of a shitty football team like I was. The point is, even if you ignore the rest of his career after he left the Jets the first time around, the dude belongs to mentioned amongst the best to ever play the cornerback position. He was that dominant, that special. He’s a fucking Jets legend.
As a Jets fan who has spent countless hours arguing with people over why Josh McCown COULD actually be good enough to get us to the playoffs, or how Bilal Powell is actually super underrated and just needs more touches to break out and become a household name, arguing about Darrelle Revis is undoubtedly the easiest I’ve ever had it. For that alone, I am forever grateful. Put his ass in the Hall of Fame, and put him in as a Jet.