NY Jets #24 - Part 2

"Who? I don't know who that it is. Once I step on the field it doesn't matter who's out there. I don't pay attention to numbers or names. I go out there and I focus on what I'm supposed to do. That's not a slight on him, or whoever he is. I just go out there and play football."

- Terrell Owens, quoted in Newsday, November 21, 2007

"Who?"

I'll tell you who. Contrary to the above sentiments of everybody's favorite sufferer of undiagnosed bipolar depression, our work is very much dedicated to to paying attention to numbers and names. And the man about whom Terrell Owens was speaking that day was Darrelle Revis, our current #24. The Cowboys made mincemeat of the Jets on Thanksgiving Day 2007. Owens scored one touchdown, and Revis had five tackles, but now, after three seasons we know exactly who that is.

One of the first things Rex Ryan said when he was first hired was that Darrelle Revis was the best cornerback in the game. I thought, well, maybe someday. And someday was last year, at which point he made himself the central point of one of the year's best defenses. Behold. His remarkable domination of Ochocinco in the season's last game and against the Chargers in the playoffs were things to which Jets fans are unaccustomed. We are accustomed to Bill Romanowski speaking ill of us and then pounding us in the divisional round. Revis' interceptions are like works of leaping, pirouetting choreography. He is a star. We have so few in the history of these numbers and names. This is what one looks like. This is no Albert Haynesworth. This is Darrelle Revis. That's who, Terrell. That's who.

Until the summer, and apparently now this season of 2010, rumors swirled that this was the week when Revis would sign for the team, but as Jets fans know, if an essential piece of a championship is missing, it will stay missing. I'm terrified now that it's all too late; that Revis has missed too much and won't be as effective as he would ordinarily have been. I know Rex Ryan has done much to bluster away the long, stale fog of bad fortune in our franchise's narrative, and he was right to insist in episode 1 of Hard Knocks that one man does not a team make. But he was also right in saying that Darrelle Revis is the best cornerback in the NFL, and among Jets fans, such a one is so unique that we cannot help but believe that one man will make all the difference. For so long, on any given Sunday, 11 men seemed to make absolutely no difference whatsoever. So why not one? This isn't a logical thing.

Darrelle Revis, contractually satisfied (a dramatization).

I wish they had signed him back sooner than Labor Day 2010. The club that keeps track of its conscession (sic) stats even in preseason should have been able to dig very, very deep much earlier and given one of its best investments exactly what he richly deserves. Yes, a contract is a contract, but as the white collar parasite CEO's of America will tell you (between taking sips of infant blood in diamond-studded carafes) there are always exceptions for people who are deemed indispensable. The Don Drapers of the world. I believe Darrelle Revis will be the last #24 in New York Jets history. That's what's important here. I don't want to have to write about another one. Call it greed or call it righteous indignation on his part. I believe Darrelle Revis is entitled to whatever he wants. If his contract made a specific demand that my Toyota Corolla to be handed over to him just so that he could bring it to his estate and light it on fire in front of his mighty entourage as a sacrificial sign of his power and glory, then that's fine. He can have it. (A talented colleague of mine has enabled you to see this conjured image for yourself). I can get up an hour early each day and take two trains to work. I just need the Jets to have a shot at the division before the 2011 lockout. As I would watch each station pass on the sunrise elevated blue line and stare out of its yellow windows, I would think to myself, "No, no. This is right. This is as it should be. This is good."

Ty Law

****

And now another modern football tale of, well, what else? - money. Salaries, the cap to supposedly contain them, the question of honor - all of these things are relative in the the angst-ridden world of pro football management. Number 24 Ty Law was a victim of franchise anxieties about the cap in New England and with the Jets. His one season with us was 2005, arguably his best as a pro. He had 10 interceptions, one of which was a stellar touchdown return against the Patriots the day after Christmas - a gift of sorts for Mr. Law because a year before, the Patriots had wanted to renegotiate with him to put themselves back under the cap. Bruised, he said that a "bridge was burned" with the Pats. Anybody who says this is fine by me. And what better way to celebrate this fissure with the Devil than with this belated Christmas gift of a touchdown pick?

But then of course the Jets made him a victim of the cap's anxieties a year later, and so Law went to play for another Jets-rejecting coach at Kansas City, Herman Edwards. Then in 2008 Law wanted back in New England. Bridge burned, bridge rebuilt.

Ray Mickens

The story becomes all the more poignant, or more likely cruel, when we consider the case of #24 Ray Mickens. As we mentioned, to cover themselves with the salary cap, the Patriots let Ty Law go in 2005, and the Jets picked him up. This made Ray Mickens, one of my personal favorite secondary players, very happy for the help he'd get in the secondary. "Unselfish one day," Karen Crouse wrote in the Times, "unemployed the next." With Law on the team just before the 2005 season, the Jets needed to fix their cap problems, and so they released Mickens and gave Law his number. After a year in Cleveland with no interceptions, the Jets resigned Mickens in 2006, ten years after Ritchie Kotite first drafted him. Then they immediately released Ray Mickens again. He was then picked up by New England to play four final games of his career with them in 2006. If these fellows did not make at least a million a year, I would almost bemoan the quandaries that the cap creates, but these guys know that it's not personal. Bridges never actually burn in the first place. That's the reality, and while the cap may theoretically encourage some parity among teams, most teams like the Jets achieve and lose that parity within a year or two partly because of these very issues.

BUT WAIT!! The rebuilt bridge got burned again!! Ty Law came back once more. He got signed by the Jets to play against the Pats the week of 11/10/08. "I know they're going to throw at me," he said to ESPN, "but I welcome the challenge -- bring it. I got the tricks for you." Ty Law seems to have retired after a year with Denver. He wore #22 while with the Jets again, and #26 with Denver.

Did you know that Darrelle Revis grew up in the same small hometown of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania as Ty Law? And that Revis also chose #24 as a tribute to the elder Law? "That's my little boy," Law said of the younger Revis. Even Darrelle Revis was somebody's little boy once. But wherever Ty Law is, wherever he goes, one thing's for sure. As soon as he's back working in anyone's lineup, for anyone, the laws of the universe will require that Ray Mickens will have to be released from something somewhere. A marriage. A prison. A demon. A job. A cobra's grip.