I'd Rather Get Beat Up In An Alley

Training camp is under way and I’m sure y’all have heard Darrelle Revis is still holding out.  Only in America could a dude making a million bucks a year under contract until 2013 look like a good guy by holding out for more money.  I’m not saying he’s wrong in doing so -  just stating facts here.  I get it.  He could break his leg (cough… cough… LEON… cough…) and suddenly not be worth the $15.6 million he says he’s worth.  I sound bitter. Sorry for that.  It’s just that loony-tunes Al Davis may have somehow discovered a way to screw up the Jet’s Super Bowl Dreams.  It wouldn’t surprise me if Bill Belichik hatched this crazy scheme in that lab of his underneath Fenway.   You know, the one where he injected Tom Brady with Super Soldier Serum a few years back.

Sadly, you can’t build a team around a corner back.  You just can’t.  Jerry Glanville tried to do that in the 90′s with Deion Sanders. I’m pretty sure that the only thing that team accomplished was getting their butts whupped in the Wild Card Round. Maybe Darelle should follow in Prime Time’s footsteps if he’s looking for some extra loot and try out for the Yankees.  But there I go digressing again.  I don’t blame the Jets for not wanting to dump “#1 Quarterback money” on the league’s #1 corner back.  We’ve got other players to pay: namely, Nick Mangold (DO IT Tanny!).

Revis is the man, no doubt about it.   He’s an unbelievably gifted athlete who not only possesses the physical skills to be an elite NFL player but also plays with smarts.  He dupes quarterbacks into throwing his direction much like a boxer drawing his opponent into throwing an ill advised right-cross.  Then — BANG! — he snags the ball and forces a turnover.  It’s the smarts that piss me off.  He knows that if the Jets pay him $16 million bucks they’re going to have less money to spread around.  Depth is important.  Talent is important.  Multiple weapons are important.  All these motherf#$%ers want big bucks.  It might be the Jets PR finally getting to me but I’m starting to see Revis as a selfish player.  He’s putting his wallet in front of his team’s ability to win games and that’s just  a bunch of baloney.

The bottom line couldn’t be clearer: you sign a contract to play a team sport for X amount of years, you honor it and show up for work no matter how much more you think you might be worth.  Haynesworth is practicing for God’s sake.  Revis – get your but to work.  Football’s a team sport, homey, and you’re letting down everybody on the defense by sitting out.

This might be my favorite picture ever.

Kerry Rhodes promised embarrassment.   Rex Ryan left me a voicemail.  Patriots fans everywhere talked landfills of trash.  Even though we’re only in week two, this matchup came as loaded as any game could be.  If it were a potato it would be one of those chopped beef, cheese, chives, butter, sour cream, salt, pepper, and barbecue sauce “bakers” that I’ve only seen in Texas.  Damn…  victory is delicious.

So everyone in the media keeps talking about the fans.  Our intensity.  Our decibel level.  What about our nervous stomachs during a very ugly 1st quarter?  The stadium was uneasy after watching Sanchez fumble his first snap of the game but when Leon Washington turned it over on the next excuse for a drive, the fear was visually perceptible.  What I mean is you could actually see it.  Our nervous energy took the shape of a big white helicopter which circled the stadium pretty much the entire game.  It’s not like it flew high above us- it hovered just above the top row.  Anybody else see that thing?  If you were at the game it was hard to miss.  I thought helicopter blades were about to scrape the side of the Meadowlands.  Yikes.  Maybe the CIA had money on the Jets…

Seriously, that 1st half was one of the hardest to watch I’ve ever sat through.  Our offense’s only constant was terrible field position.  The Jets looked inept.  We kept giving Tom “I’m perfect” Brady the ball in Jets territory.  I’ve seen this movie many times before.  It ends in tragedy- like a car accident inside a bullet commuter train during rush hour.  All the Pats had to do was move the ball forward and they could sniff the endzone.  Except, well, they couldn’t really move the ball forward.  And the only thing Brady was sniffing was the turf.  He threw 47 passes and not a single one resulted in a touchdown.  His longest pass went about 40 yards to Darrelle Revis and while it was a tight spiral I think he could have led our star corner a little better.   How’s he supposed to get a pick six when he can’t get separation from Randy Moss.  This is about when the “same old Jets” comments ceased and fans dug in with our rookie quarterback.  Mark Sanchez might be the new kid but once he settles down you can almost see the wheels turning in his head.  It’s only a matter of time before he figures out who is left open when the opposing team blitzes.

Revis was fantastic.  Even when it comes to describing his own performance on Moss.

“I just covered him.  If he went to the bathroom, I went, too. I covered him any way I could. When he went to the sidelines, when our offense was on the field and he sat down, I sat right across from him wherever he was sitting on the bench.”

I feel like not enough is being made out of the handshake(s) at the end of the game.  I gotta say I love Rex Ryan.  The dude left me a message, gave me a game ball, and blitzed Belichick all the way through the good sportsmanship handshake.  Belicheat almost dodged D-Rex only to run into a grinning Mark Sanchez lurking with a handshake of his own.  Kill the grinch with kindness…. what a thing of beauty.