Two years ago, when Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis refused to report to training camp unless the team gave him a raise, Woody Johnson eventually opened up his checkbook and made Revis happy. Now there’s talk that Revis could hold out from camp again, and Johnson is refusing to say whether he’d be open to giving Revis a raise again.
Johnson told the Star-Ledger that any contract issues will be handled privately by General Manager Mike Tannenbaum, and that he has nothing to say about Revis other than that he expects Revis to be with the Jets during the 2012 season.
“We don’t talk about contracts and anything like that,” Johnson said. “Maybe Mike can give you more insight to the specifics of anything that might have to do with the contract situation, but I expect Revis to be playing for us in 2012.”
Johnson stressed that Revis is important to the team, but he also stressed that it’s important to build a complete roster, and you can’t give every player a raise every time he decides the contract he signed isn’t good enough.
“I really always anticipate the best, so I don’t really look for problems,” Johnson said. “We’re trying to build a whole team, we have a lot of things we have to put together to build a winning team, not just one player. Albeit an important player. We have 53 players, 53 people that are going to make the team, and everybody’s got a different situation. We’ve got to make it all work.”
The New York Daily News reports that if Revis holds out, his current contract gives the Jets the ability to extend the deal for “three years at modest numbers,” while if Revis plays his final two years without holding out, the Jets can’t franchise him in 2014. That means the Jets have more leverage than Revis now, while Revis will have more leverage two years from now. And that may be enough to make Johnson think he doesn’t have to worry about Revis’s contract this year, even though he knows he’ll eventually be back at the negotiating table with the team’s best player.