Darrelle Revis Retires

This is not the most shocking news we’ll hear all year. Because as good as Darrelle Revis was in his first tour of duty with the Jets and his one season each in Tampa and New England, those glory days are way in his rearview. This isn’t the right time to talk about his struggles of the last three years when he’s been a shadow of himself. Instead it’s the time to say that, for the seven seasons from his rookie year in 2007 to his championship in 2014, he was as good as there probably ever was in this game.

Like Revis said in his retirement post, the “Shutdown Corner” was considered extinct. A species of man that belonged on display in a diorama at the Smithsonian, wiped out by NFL rules that call it a spot foul if you exhale on a receiver beyond five yards from the line of scrimmage. At a time when the league was trying to trend toward small, mobile corners whose best attribute was a quick baseball turn to mirror receivers rather than knock them off their routes, Revis put the conventional wisdom on its head. He jammed guys off the line, kept them from getting free release, and then stayed Krazy Glued to them throughout their routes. Even though he was just 5-11 and 200 lb, he played like a much bigger press defender. And he could goad a quarterback into thinking his man was open, then closing on him once the ball was in the air better than anyone I’ve seen save maybe Deion Sanders. In his first public practice at Patriots training camp, he pulled that on a crossing route with the offense backed up near their own goal line. Running two full steps behind his man until Brady released the ball, then putting on a turbo boost to step under the route for the pick-6. Goading the GOAT, if you will.

You can argue if he’s the greatest corner of all time. Some would say Sanders. Mike Haynes was as good as I’ve ever seen. And don’t sleep on Mel Blount, the Steelers’ force of nature who so beat the bag out of the poor bastards who had to face him in order to pay their bills that they invented the 5-yard contact rule just because of him. But Revis is definitely in the conversation.

What is not in question is where Revis Island ranks as a businessman. The absolute GOAT. No one ever maximized his earning potential the way he did. He stared down every personnel guy with the misfortune to sit across the table from him and didn’t leave a nickel on the table. Or a piece of meat on their bones. The best plot line of the best season of Hard Knocks ever, the one with the Jets, was watching poor Rex Ryan and team execs following Revis all over the map begging him to end his holdout and take their offer. And once he squeezed every last drop of juice out of them, he immediately said he wouldn’t rule out doing it again next year. Just utterly brutal. Like he was to opposing receivers.

Again, I won’t get into the last three seasons. Instead I’ll just say his was one of those careers that blazed with white hot fire, then burned out quickly. But he earned a ring in 2014, playing his position like it hadn’t been done in 10 years prior to him coming to New England. (He shut down Doug Baldwin in Super Bowl XLIX to one catch and, even though that was a touchdown, was a brilliantly executed rub route where Baldwin used the official to come free.) And for that, I’ll be eternally grateful. And just as a football fan, I’ll always appreciate a guy playing an almost impossible position where all the rules are stacked against him, at a level as high as Revis achieved. We could use more guys like him. Sadly, we just lost one. Godspeed.