With both the Jets and cornerback Darrelle Revis honoring (for the most part) the agreement not to discuss the status of the player’s negotiations, there really hasn’t been much to talk about regarding the Revis holdout, but for the wrong-but-probably-not-fabricated reports of an imminent deal and/or actual progress between the two sides.
So ESPN.com dispatched long-time Jets beat writer Rich Cimini to Aliquippa, Pennsylvania to try to find Revis, who has been invisible and silent since launching his holdout.
Cimini chronicles for ESPN.com his trip to one of the corners of the cradle of pro football, Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. For the most part, the people of Aliquippa, a place that Cimini at times seems to subtly deride, protected Revis, providing little or no information about his whereabouts.
Eventually, Cimini tracked down Revis’ grandmother, who spoke about her grandson’s situation. In no uncertain terms.
‘Darrelle does what he does because he loves it,” she said. “For this to be happening to him, it’s almost like a slap in the face, because he’s not appreciated. . . . I know he wants to play, but Darrelle understands contract negotiations. . . . Some players don’t get it, but Darrelle can read a contract. I think he’s comfortable with his decision [to hold out] because he knows what he was told by the Jets and he knows what he’s worth.
“People are trying to portray him as greedy, but he has outperformed his contract,” she said. “For them to put him in this position is just unreal.”
We realize that Mrs. Gilbert is an adult, and that she has the right to talk or not talk to anyone she wants. But Cimini probably was anxious to return home from his Aliquippa trip with something other than “no comment” and/or “Darrelle’s not here, man,” and we hope that he was fair and complete in explaining to Mrs. Gilbert: (1) who he is; (2) who he works for; (3) why he was there; and (4) what he plans to do with what she says. And we only point any of that out because Cimini threw in a gratuitous "[s]o much for the gag order” in the middle of her comments, as if her mission was to serve as Darrelle’s surrogate mouthpiece.
Maybe we’re just being overly sensitive to the possibility that Mrs. Gilbert is a trusting soul who invited a reporter into her home without realizing that her words would become the centerpiece of a story, due to the reporter’s inability to find anyone else who would talk. There’s just something about this that bugs us a little bit, and we probably wouldn’t have mentioned it but for the fact that the "[s]o much for the gag order” line bugged us a lot.