Darrelle Revis is a very good player. He’s also very expensive.
Last year, the Buccaneers decided that Revis was too expensive, so they cut him. This year, the Patriots are grappling with the same decision.
With Revis currently slated to make $20 million in 2015 -- and count $25 million against the Patriots’ salary cap -- Tom Curran of CSNNE.com writes that everything else is on hold in New England while the Patriots try to figure out what to do with Revis. If they cut him, they don’t have to pay the $20 million, but they lose their best defensive player. If they keep him, the $25 million cap charge may make it impossible for the Patriots to afford other key players who are slated to become free agents, like Devin McCourty and Stephen Gostkowski.
Ideally, the Patriots would like to work out a contract extension with Revis that lessens his salary cap hit in 2015 and keeps him on the roster for years to come. But Revis generally hasn’t been the type to give home-town discounts, so if the Patriots are going to get Revis to accept a new deal, it had better guarantee him a whole lot of money in 2015 and beyond.
Complicating matters is that two of the teams that would be most interested in Revis are division rivals the Bills and Jets. New Bills coach Rex Ryan has long said Revis is one of the best players he’s ever coached, and Jets owner Woody Johnson risked violating the NFL’s tampering rules by saying this year that he’d be interested in bringing Revis back. The Patriots surely don’t want Revis to hit the open market if they’re going to have to face him twice a year.
So the Patriots are probably going to find a way to keep Revis in the fold. But that’s going to be expensive, and it’s going to have a ripple effect on all the Patriots’ other offseason moves.