Who were the dominant CB's on Rex's top 5 defenses prior to the Jets? And before everyone talks about the other players at other positions - that's irrelevant to this particular discussion because the poster is saying RR NEEDS a shutdown corner.
Revis was great in the first defense that Rex used with the Jets. Tons of pressure, no time to think, #1 guy always locked down, #2 guy doubled and locked down. It was like the perfect storm of "shutdown corner is dominant." Well the Jets don't do that stuff any more. The NFL caught on to the fact that the way to minimize the advantage the Jets had on defense was to spread them out and force single coverage on several receivers. This also allowed the opposing run game to become unstuffed since the Jets wound up in nickle coverage a lot and the box often had 6 defenders in it instead of 8. Last year the Patriots went the final step and went to 2 TE's in a spread formation with 2 WR's also. Now they had strength in the middle for the run and also the Jets spread wide and unable to defend the pass the way they wanted to. We have to face the fact that the defense that made Darrelle Revis great is not viable any more at the top level. It hasn't been viable since Peyton Manning picked the Jets apart in the AFC championship game in 2009. The Jets answer to that loss was to go get more corners to cover the extra receivers but they lost most of the pressure in the defense when they went to cover first. In 2010 the Steelers basically spread things out against the Jets and then ran out of that formation in the first half of the AFC championship game. Roethlisberger had trouble throwing the ball but the Steelers had no trouble maintaining possession on the ground anyway. The Jets couldn't cover the spread either when it really mattered at the end of the game. This is all because the Jets are built around the defensive backfield and not frontline pressure. When they could use a gimmick, the constant blitzing, to make the QB throw into that defensive backfield under pressure everything worked. Since then it has been a shifting maze of smoke and mirrors of increasingly less value as Rex and company have tried to recreate the magic from 2009 but without the blitzing. They've failed in that process. You're just not going to be a great defense that controls the game when all the talent is in the back 4. The Jets need a couple of great players up front if they want to get back to where they were. They need a LDE or NT who pushes the pocket heavily and they need a ROLB who can sack the QB 14 times a year. You can talk all you want about thr #5 defense last year and you're still not going to get around the fact that that defense folded routinely when the other team just needed one score to put the Jets away. It folded when the other team had the personnel to go strong up the middle of the field from a spread formation. That's because the Jets were not strong up the middle of the field on defense and Darrelle Revis wasn't a big factor when the other team attacked that weakness.
We took 2 players in day one of the draft to get younger,faster and stronger on the front 7. Lets see how that pans out this year.
So let's say Mo Wilkerson becomes great. He's Reggie White incarnate and worth 14 sacks a year as a 3-4 pass rusher. How do you pay him the amount of money that he is going to be worth with a CB making $12 million a year (a conservative figure on Revis next contract) and another one making $8 million a year? Let's say Kenrick Ellis steps up and becomes Kris Jenkins the younger. How do you pay him for that? The Jets are going to have about $60-65 million a year to spend on the defensive side of the ball for the foreseeable future. How do they manage to pay their talent on that when they have $20+ million in the starting CB's and another 1st round pick back there as well when they have to pay Wilson on his 2nd contract? If Wilson ultimately works out he's going to be a $7-8 million a year type as well at CB so dumping Cro will only work until Wilson's 2nd contract. That's because 1st round corners who work out get paid. It's not like they're 4th round guys that you can lock up a year early at $3.5-4 million a year because they're worried about what a bad season would do to their value and they've never gotten paid. How do they add a $6-8 million a year free safety like the Steelers and Ravens have, a guy that controls the flow on defense and makes plays? How do they add a ROLB to put pressure on the Qb from the other side so MoWilk doesn't get double-teamed on every down? Letting Revis be the tail that wags the dog leads nowhere for the Jets but where they've already been with him and that's not in the Super Bowl with a good chance to win.
Anybody that would come in here and post about how they would trade Revis for some young unproven player is by definition a complete and utter idiot.
I'd take Andrew Luck or RGIII over Revis every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Anybody who wouldn't is an idiot.
He shuts down one receiver. Yeah, he's amazing at it, but there's no need to have the best CB in the game for what he costs. You need game-changing players. Sure, opposing coaches have to game plan around him, but in today's NFL, you need 3 things: 1. a quarterback. 2. protection for the quarterback. 3. a pass rush. Revis falls into none of those categories and while he may be the greatest player in the NFL, the truth is that he doesn't play a position that impacts the game as much as we need him to for the price. If you can get fair value, I think you take it.
While he can shut down one player, other teams have gotten by without having shutdown corner... see Giants, Packers, Steelers
They don't help that much in a 3-4 defense. Expecting a pass rush out of a 3-4 NT and DE isn't how this defense is supposed to work. I believe the Jets have an adequate amount of depth on the DL but the more important LB corpse is a disaster... Scott is done and the Jets will need to manage him for one more year until they can cut him. Pace is a nice player but hardly worth the cap hit. Bryan Thomas is coming off the Achilles injury and just a stop-gap measure. This means the Jets, running a defense that values production out of LBs, will need to replace 3 starters by the start of the 2013 season. Given that the pass rush comes from the LBs in the 3-4 and that teams have been exposing the lack of speed by the Jets at this position in the quick/timing passing game and down the middle (TEs), the Jets need to do something ASAP. Spending almost $20 million for 2 lockdown corners and basically overpaying these 3 LBs (they will amount to almost $17 million in savings in 2013) is killing this team. The Jets need to draft at least 2 starting (a starter this year and for next year) LBs in this years draft in a hope both addressing the position and cap implications. I just don't see how the Jets can afford to keep both Revis and Cromartie moving forward. One of them will definitely not be a Jet in 2014. Cro's cap savings are $9.5 million that year if they release him and Revis's trade value will never be higher leading up to the 2013 season. If the offer comes next year for two #1s for Revis, I say good-bye Darrelle! The Jets would be much better served with the additional draft picks and salary cap saving than tying everything up in one player whose impact is minimal. A disruptive pass rush is a force multiplier for a defense far in excess of any impact provided by a shutdown corner. A corner can only take away 1 receiver on offense. A pass rusher causes disruption across the board through sacks, QB hits & pressures, disruption of timing on offense, and can cause the offense to change pass blocking schemes and hold a TE or RB back to block (which means they are not down field as a receiver). I think Revis is a probably HOF player but he is simply not worth the cost to this team given the salcap implications and the amount of other holes on this team.
So do we hope for Wilk and Ellis to turn out to be just mediocre so that we don't get stuck having to pay them more than we want to? I really don't get this logic. I don't think you can build a team based on that kind of hypothetical thinking. Aren't we hoping that Wilk and Ellis both turn out to be good enough to warrant getting paid serious money? If that happens the Jets will cross that bridge when they come to it - either they work out a way to give them contracts that reward their talent but don't cripple the team financially, or they are forced to trade someone in which case you would hope they get fair compensation - either way why is that a problem? It's not going to be this season and most likely not next year either (I don't know what their rookie contracts are like off the top of my head but I have to imagine it would be at least a couple of years before either would be demanding a big 2nd contract) so why would you worry about it now?
I would take a guy who's likely the best shutdown corner ever and in his prime over a couple of highly touted but totally UNPROVEN QBs who have never taken an NFL snap. Call me an idiot. It's funny, during the season I almost always agreed with your posts. Since the offseason started it's been the exact opposite - pretty funny.
This is a great post. Hits just about all the salient points regarding the Jet's defensive posture at this point and the decline we are witnessing.
If we continue to trade up and out of draft picks and let our core players move into second and third contracts without building sufficient talent around them you could argue we peaked in 08 and 09 and are in the start of a long decline. In that scenario we might as well trade Revis. We may have to go to more 4/3 or 4/2's. Maybin might be able to bring some rush this year. No doubt we need a monster draft this year. Still I wouldn't discount last years draft yet.
I usually agree with you but in this case not. If you'd taken the best CB in the NFL over your choice of Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf in 1998 you'd have been wrong. You'd have had to choose right to get the better of the deal but that CB had not a prayer of being more valuable than the best QB in that draft. Same thing is true this year. There is no CB in the NFL that is more valuable than the choice between Andrew Luck and RG III. There are very few players at any position that are more valuable than those two right now. I didn't totally flip on Tannenbaum until the Hunter and Holmes decisions. Since then I think he's done very little right and I do not expect better of him in the future. He's a riverboat gambler in a league that's dominated by the riverboat owners.
trading for Revis, I never thought of before, but it does make sense after reading the arguments in this thread. If we can get someone who can contribute more on the field, someone who has more impact, or maybe two impactful players, sure, why not. Revis was the man but as pointed out, it doesnt matter anymore.
Please stop. Just, stop. You are so unbearably annoying and pessimistic you barely even qualify as a Jet fan these days.
Just because in your eyes the posters is "pessimistic" that does not make him any less a NYJ fan then yourself. Maybe if you sat down & gave it some thought instead of your most likely knee jerk reaction you may discover in the ultimate end that makes very good sense to trade Revis
Dude, you're probably the only poster on here who is more SOJ than he is. I understand that you're an oldtimer and that you've stuck with the team for 40+ years or whatever, but come on - don't you ever have anything positive to say about the team? The act is old.
But that's exactly my point, how did Ryan Leaf turn out? People may think Luck is the next Peyton but he could be the next Ryan Leaf or Matt Leinart - it's a crap shoot. To say you would happily trade the best CB in the league in the prime of his career for a roll of the dice on a highly touted QB prospect crazy. Who says these guys are so incredibly valuable when neither of them has yet to play a down in the NFL? That makes no sense at all.
For me it comes down to a known quantity to an unknown quantity if you were to trade Revis for picks. It could become part of NFL lore, "the Jets traded Revis for 10 picks, all of whom turned out to be busts".
