Pro Football Focus Suggests Darrelle Revis Might Be 'Slowing Down'
BOSTON (CBS) -- Did Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots let Darrelle Revis walk via free agency -- and via big money -- because they saw a decline in his game in the 2014 season?
That is the question being asked by Pro Football Focus analyst Sam Monson today.
Monson, you'll remember, is the same analyst who wrote last offseason that Tom Brady was no longer a top-five quarterback in the NFL. Brady went on to improve his completion percentage by 3.6 points, throw eight more touchdowns and two fewer interceptions en route to leading his team to the playoffs, when he completed 68.9 percent of his passes for 10 touchdowns and four interceptions. In the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, Brady certainly looked top-five-worthy when he completed 13 of his 15 passes for 124 yards and two touchdowns against the best pass defense in the NFL.
So Monson doesn't have a perfect record when it comes to forecasting the decline of future Hall of Famers, and he admitted as much in his Revis piece by saying, "I've dug myself a hole before by predicting declines."
Despite that history, Monson was curious about the thought process in both the Patriots' and Jets' front offices, which seemed to originate from this bit of curiosity:
And so he still went forward with his Revis story. You have to at least respect that gumption. Let's hear what he had to say. Some highlights:
"... most players, no matter how good, will see the final years of their career marked by a decline in play."
"... despite all those [excellent] numbers, there was a lot of bad in his tape that you typically don't find in a Revis season. Plays where he just got flat out beat."
"... if we go hunting in the tape for examples to back it up, we don't need to go very far into the season to get a great one. Revis looked terrified of Mike Wallace in the opening game of the season against Miami. He gave up monster cushions for most of the game and put himself in a position of needing to bite hard on the first move Wallace showed him, because he was so far off in coverage."
"... I didn't have any problem finding that bad a play in his tape. I quickly pulled out a list of a dozen ugly plays from his regular season in coverage from the PFF database."
"... Eric Decker beat him a couple of times, Emmanuel Sanders, Sammy Watkins, and in the playoffs there was Steve Smith beating him badly for a score. He was beaten in a variety of different routes and coverages, but one word kept coming to mind watching him on these plays: slow."
"Lastly, and perhaps most interestingly – I think Revis knows exactly where he is in terms of his speed and quickness. On a few of these plays you can see Revis trying to protect himself against the release, cheating in his technique to avoid having to try and stay with a receiver at the line."
It must be noted that Monson curbed much of this discussion by referencing Revis' numbers in 2014, which were at or near the very top of the league. PFF ranked him as the fourth-best cornerback in football last year.
Yet Revis is 29 and will turn 30 years old this summer, and in a league with Richard Sherman (26), Patrick Peterson (24), Chris Harris (25), Vontae Davis (26), Joe Haden (25) and the like, it's admittedly an uphill battle for Revis to be able to keep up.
Still, after the season Revis just had, to question how long he will be great seems a bit out of place. With Brady last year, even though there were some obvious factors (like a miserable offensive line and a lack of viable receiving options), at least there were some numbers to back up the point. This time, it's a bit of a tougher sell.
To me (and no, I don't break down every single play at every single position across the league), when I try to think of Revis' bad plays from the entire season, they come to mind immediately. But there are only a handful. The Wallace double-move in Week 1 comes to mind, as does Steve Smith's near-dominance of Revis in the first half of the Patriots-Ravens divisional round meeting. But when you have to search through hours of film and pore over every single play from a season to find some that weren't excellent, chances are that you're dealing with a damn fine cornerback.
Will he be a bit worse at his job three seasons from now? Almost assuredly. Did the Jets pay more money for Revis than the cornerback is realistically worth? Sure. But that's the price of doing business. Sometimes if you want a great player, you've got to be willing to pay more than anybody else.
So while there might be reason to have some doubts about whether Revis will earn every last penny of his $39 million in guaranteed money, it's a safe bet that he'll rank somewhere between 1 and 10 in every measurable category for cornerbacks next season.
Not many folks in New England accepted last offseason's "Tom Brady in decline" story, and given the general level of outrage that's carried on from the winter into the spring about losing Revis to the Jets, it's unlikely that this story will provide too much comfort.
Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here. You can email him or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
