The Jets want to trade cornerback Darrelle Revis. Revis doesn’t want to be traded.
And that’s enough to keep a trade from happening.
Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports fills in the obvious blanks created by the broad philosophical divide, reporting that the lack of cooperation between the Jets and the player’s agents is making it harder to make something happen.
“If I’m making this deal, there’s a lot of stuff I need to know,” an unnamed NFC team executive told Cole. “I need to know if he’s healthy. I need to know if he wants to play for us. I need to know if I’m going to get a long-term deal or is this one year and we’ll see.
“But I talk to the Jets and they’re like, ‘OK, what are you offering?’ I can’t begin to figure it out.”
That’s why, as Cole explains, the Jets won’t get anywhere until they authorize interested teams to talk to the agents about a new contract. Otherwise, the Jets will be able to move Revis only with a deal that would entail conditional picks based on whether Revis eventually is signed to a new contract.
But the Jets should want Revis to be signed to a new contract. If his new team treats it as a one-year rental, the chances of Revis resurfacing in 2014 with the Patriots, Giants, Bills, or Dolphins will be the same as it would be if the Jets kept Revis for 2013.
Complicating matters is the torn ACL from which Revis is recovering. How can a team make a major investment without knowing whether and to what extent Revis will be the same player he was before the knee injury?
Of course, there’s a chance that the Jets will eventually move the process to a different phase, allowing contact on a new contract after trimming the truly interested teams from the window shoppers. And that phase could come after next week’s league meetings, when all of the owners and General Managers and coaches will be in the same place at the same time.