The NFL’s ultimate businessman appeared to make the ultimate business decision on Saturday night.
Chiefs cornerback Darrelle Revis, a late-season addition to the team who surely hoped to parlay a couple of strong postseason performances into a big payday next year (either under the second year of his Kansas City contract or elsewhere), clearly pulled up while pursuing Titans running back Derrick Henry on the key third-down play that ultimately sealed the game for Tennessee.
On one side of the ball, quarterback Marcus Mariota was throwing blocks and doing whatever he needed to do to help his team advance. On the other side of the ball, Revis, who was approaching from an angle, had a chance to catch Henry and to try to tackle him before he reached the line to gain. But Revis didn’t accelerate; he slowed down.
Plenty have noticed the lack of effort, and plenty are calling Revis, who has admirably worked the system to his financial advantage time and again, out for it.
He’s not the first, and surely won’t be the last, cornerback to show an aversion to contact. With the season most likely ending for the Chiefs (and with Revis most likely having little confidence in the ability of the offense to score any points even if the Chiefs had gotten the ball back), he decided not to risk injury by doing everything he physically could to catch Henry and knock him to the ground.
Right, wrong, or otherwise. It was plain to see. And it likely will do little to keep an otherwise interested team in trying to lure Revis for 2018, when he won’t have a $6 million offset to his guaranteed pay from the Jets.