SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Darrelle Revis was facing one of the more difficult decisions of his life. He was a free agent for the first time, with teams around the NFL scrambling for his services. And while his agents and advisors and family members tended to the business of football, executing Revis' plan that would culminate with him playing for the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX, the All-Pro cornerback needed to find something to occupy his time and keep his mind off the meetings and negotiations swirling around him.
In years past, when a contract holdout or impasse kept him away from the game, he would usually find a beach somewhere to make a temporary home. This past March, however, Revis took a different approach, and spent the better part of two days tooling around South Florida on a mini-motorcycle, getting a license to operate a Vespa with the son of his agent, Neil Schwartz.
From 8 a.m. until noon Revis and Jesse Schwartz got acquainted with a big parking lot and turning and stopping, while Jesse's dad weighed offers and sorted through scenarios. The goal was putting Revis, 29, in a position to finally win again. Revis wanted to be on a contender after being dealt from the spiraling Jets to the sagging Buccaneers in 2013, and then being released from Tampa in the offseason. The Bucs opted to cut Revis before triggering a roster bonus and a condition that would cause the team to send a third-round pick to the Jets instead of a fourth-round selection. Revis needed an oasis of sorts, with his future still uncertain at the time in the aftermath of the Bucs' decision. He found it on a Vespa.
"I just wanted something to get away and clear my mind and do something else to keep me busy instead of having stress or pressure on me," Revis said, finding a few minutes of downtime after Super Bowl media day in the back offices of a Whole Foods in Scottsdale after doing a promotional appearance there for Steaz, a brand of organic teas that he has partnered with. "So that's how I spent my days. And I think that's how we always handle my situations. When I was a rookie and had to hold out I was on the beach with [agent] Jonathan [Feinsod] in the Hamptons. And this is how we always approach it: Just get your mind off of it so it doesn't drive you crazy."
Revis and Jesse Schwartz took orders from a crusty old instructor named Dale to learn how to ride the bike, while the phone calls and offers came in and he grew closer to a deal with the Patriots, a team Revis had immediate interest in. "Dale was pretty interesting, he was man," Revis said. "He had his whiskers, and he could be tough, but he was pretty cool. We were grinding for two days."
Schwartz (the elder) and Feinsod were grinding as well, with their work resulting in a complicated two-year deal, at least on paper, that earned Revis $12 million this season (he made a staggering $16 million in his lone season in Tampa), with him remaining the highest-paid corner in the game at the time of his signing. The creative approach resulted in what amounts to a faux contract year in 2015 (New England would have to pay Revis $20 million for that season with an impossible $25 million cap hit) that allowed the Patriots to have more cap flexibility in 2014 and still richly reward the corner. It sets the stage for what could be another flurry of free-agent talks in just a few weeks -- all things being equal, Revis would like stay in New England, he told me -- and possibly another March where the star ends up finding a new temporary hobby or two to get away from it all.
What is certain is that Revis, coming off a stellar season and starting next season two full years removed from his ACL tear, is incredibly well-positioned to hit the market again, should it come to that. And the plan he and his inner circle put together last winter has worked to perfection, with a chance to hoist a Lombardi Trophy and earn a Super Bowl ring perhaps just four quarters away.
The pursuit of Revis
Conversations with several league executives and sources provided an insight into how Revis ended up with the Patriots in March, through a series of events. It began with Tampa's owners firing their coach and general manager after the 2013 season, moving on from the men who dealt a first-round pick and more for Revis a few months before and then signed him to a deal worth $16 million a season. New coach Lovie Smith, rigidly dedicated to a zone coverage scheme, didn't see the value in paying Revis that kind of money as a lockdown man-to-man corner, and by the combine last year astute teams had determined Revis would be available.
The Bucs had little leverage -- it was clear they would ultimately cut Revis rather than give up the higher pick to the Jets and to avoid a looming $1.5 million roster bonus, and Revis and his agents are the rare men to have thrived, repeatedly, even when opting to hold out or not report if necessary. If perennially losing teams didn't realize that dealing for Revis, and willingly continuing to pay him $16 million a year, was a lost cause -- he wasn't going to end up at some outpost -- they would soon enough.
Revis, as well as his agents, declined to speak about other teams or the specifics of any talks with them, but the list of potential suitors was long. NFL sources said the Raiders and Browns both had deals with Tampa essentially in place for Revis, but those trades were scuttled when it became clear that's not where Revis would be interested in playing. Sources said Jets coach Rex Ryan was consumed with re-acquiring Revis -- a former first-round pick of his and someone who could immediately lift New York's depleted secondary (one that ended up damning their season), but could gain no traction with his appeals to ownership and the front office.
Ryan's relationship with Revis is very strong, and Revis became the embodiment of the Big Apple Star Athlete during his time there, falling in love with the city and all it had to offer. Getting Revis back, and having to give up little to do so after already landing two picks from Tampa in the original trade, might have saved the doomed regime of general manager John Idzik and would have been heralded by Jets fans. The Bucs would have essentially rehabbed Revis, coming off his 2012 ACL tear, for the Jets and New York could benefit. All of it appealed greatly to the head coach, but came at a time when Ryan's cache within the organization was waning (his job was in the balance through 2013 and he would be fired right after the 2014 season).
At one point Ryan told confidants on his staff he thought he would maybe pull off acquiring Revis "around Idzik's back" but nothing materialized. While Ryan was acutely monitoring the situation and trying to keep the Jets in the game, in reality he was losing time. Ryan made a calculated gamble that, unable to convince others in the organization to give up a draft pick for Revis, he would be able to get them to secure him as a free agent, at a lesser salary. But sources said even that gained little traction within the front office and the Jets had quickly earned a reputation for being patient and prudent to a fault during this regime.
Had Ryan been able to generate support to move on Revis via trade or free agent, the corner would have embraced the opportunity, with some close to him maintaining the Jets were his top choice. But it wasn't meant to be.
And as that roster bonus date drew nearer, the Bucs knew they were going to just let Revis go rather than pay it. They made an overture at a restricted deal but that wasn't going to happen. On March 12 they did the inevitable and released Revis. It was time to reconvene with his most trusted advisors and hatch a plan. Revis and Schwartz live in the same South Florida beachfront high rise in the offseason, so the commute was minimal. "I just came down the elevator," Revis said with a smile, and he and Schwartz sat next to each other, in the agent's condo, while the corner's uncle, Sean Gilbert, a former NFL star himself who is running for executive director of the NFLPA, was on the speaker phone from his car and Fiensod was on from his office in New York.
New England comes to the fore
By this time the agents had a good read on who the likely remaining candidates were to push for Revis' services. The more they spoke, the more the Patriots kept coming up. Getting to a winning team was paramount, one with strong ownership. Revis came up with his pecking order from that group. At the end of the lengthy discussion Schwartz gave his client some simple advice: "Don't give me an answer now, let's sleep on it."
"When Tampa decided to let me go it was going to be a process of which teams were interested in me," Revis said, "and we went down the list and tried to pick out the best playoff and Super Bowl contenders. It came down to New England and Denver and there were a lot more teams interested and Denver and New England stuck out. I didn't know much about Denver so l was leaning more to New England, because I played against them in New York and the rivalry and being familiar with Bill Belichick. And it was a no brainer at the end. I felt very comfortable with New England."
The Patriots were the top choice at that point, and as teams began more formal communications -- and Revis took to the Vespa -- they remained at that perch.
The Chiefs maintained a pursuit, sources said, with their defensive coordinator, Bob Sutton, a former coach of Revis in New York and someone the corner regarded highly. The Chiefs had been a playoff team and had some good pieces in place on defense, which made them worthy of consideration. The Broncos, off a Super Bowl defeat and with Peyton Manning'slong-term future in doubt, were all in for 2014 and made Revis a priority, with Aqib Talib, who they eventually signed to a big free-agent deal, a contingency as well.
The Patriots were willing to let Talib go in no small part, sources said, because of Revis. The Patriots had been talking to the Bucs for a while -- Tampa general manager Jason Licht is a former Pats executive who has done several deals with them in just his first year in that position -- and had a bead on Revis' trade market throughout the entire process, determining back at the combine that he was going to be released if he wasn't traded.
Dealing for Revis and paying $16 million wasn't nearly as attractive to New England as doing a new deal. The Patriots gambled, correctly, that all things being equal, and with the Jets out of the mix, that they would be tops on Revis' list when he hit the open market. Schwartz and Feinsod had a read on the market as well, and knew young corners Richard Sherman, Patrick Peterson and Joe Haden were all going to get big new deals during the offseason, driving up the corner market. While $16 million a year wasn't going to be the going rate, certainly Revis was going to get well north of $10 million per season. And Revis, unlike some players, wasn't caught up in getting a huge signing bonus; with his belief in his ability, going year to year at a large salary was plenty fine by him.
"It's just having belief and faith in everything I do," Revis said. "Believing is the key. You have to have belief in whatever you do whether it's charity work or promoting something or being a part of a football team." And, as Schwartz put it -- "Once Darrelle believes, then we all as a team believe."
With the mutual interest between Revis and the Patriots only growing, he began talking to owner Bob Kraft and coach Bill Belichick on the phone, and then a face-to-face meeting was set at Kraft's house in Florida with Revis and Schwartz. "It went well," Revis said. "That's what drew me in even more. I was very comfortable with the New England Patriots."
While some of the concepts with the contract became a little complicated, the nuts and bolts of the deal were hammered out in a matter of minutes. Revis would make $12 million in 2014, and while the deal could be longer with additional seasons for cap purposes, etc., it would have to read as one-year contract at its core (i.e., no ability to franchise or transition him in 2015). The Patriots have been thrilled with Revis' production, obviously, and while sources said keeping him at the $25 million cap figure is basically impossible, Kraft will push to get him signed to a new deal this offseason before free agency officially begins in March.
What's next
All of that, however, can wait. That's talk for after the Super Bowl. Revis' plan isn't quite fully complete yet. Finishing as the last team standing is the last part still to be accomplished. Revis is staying solely focused on the Super Bowl, at a time when plenty are asking questions about his future again.
"I love playing for Bill [Belichick], it's pretty awesome," he said. "We're going to win -- that's what he offers. It's great to win and this is my eighth year and I've been through a lot -- not reaching our goals in New York and being on 4-12 team in Tampa and earlier in career in New York. So if all the stars align and everything goes well, I could be back there this offseason, or I could be moving on somewhere else. It's all fine. It is what it is."
And should Revis need to clear his mind for a bit, as the offers and coming in and the jostling for his services has begun again, well, he could always take that Vespa back out for a spin.
