Amid chatter of a possible Darrelle Revis reunion in New England, many assume he’d return as a safety. That currently looks like a bad assumption.
As explained by Karen Guregian of the Boston Herald, the 2015 negotiations between the Patriots and Revis included a suggestion that he could move to safety. Coach Bill Belichick balked, arguing that the player’s skills didn’t translate to the safety position.
So if Revis returns (and that remains a big if), it would be as a cornerback. Which means it would happen most likely after cornerback Malcolm Butler is traded, apparently to the Saints.
It also would happen only if the Patriots come to terms with verbal shots that were fired by Revis regarding #DeflateGate after he left the Patriots for the Jets.
“[The Patriots] have a history of doing stuff,” Revis said at the time, via Guregian. “You can’t hide that. . . . Tom [Brady] was there when they did that stuff in the past. New England’s been doing stuff in the past and getting in trouble. When stuff repeatedly happens, then that’s it. I don’t know what else to tell you. Stuff repeatedly happened through the years. You got SpyGate, you got this and that and everything else.”
Then there’s the reality that the Patriots may not be willing to pay Revis $6 million or enough more than that to get him to choose to play versus not playing and collecting $6 million from the Jets. If Revis would choose to play for the Patriots for the league minimum, the Jets would essentially be paying most of his salary for Revis to play for the Patriots.
That’s an outcome that possibly would be sufficiently delicious to get the Patriots to overlook the things Revis said two years ago.