Jets Accuse Patriots Of Tampering
As you may know, the New England Patriots recently accused the New York Jets of tampering in their efforts to acquire Darrelle Revis after some suspicious comments were made by Jets’ owner Woody Johnson. Back in December, Johnson stated that he would “love for Darrelle to come back” while Revis was obviously still under contract with the Patriots. Two months later Darrelle came back, and suddenly Johnson’s comments seemed a little fishy. Although he claims that he misspoke, that didn’t stop the Pats from filing tampering charges.
While this matter is currently being investigated by the league, the Jets decided yesterday that they would try to get even. In a hopeless attempt to fire back at their AFC East superiors, they have accused the Patriots of tampering following some comments made by Robert Kraft on Monday. When asked about letting Revis go, Kraft said “We wanted to keep him. We wanted him in our system. We have certain disciplines and we had hoped it would work out.”
It’s no secret that the New York Jets have been quite the laughing stock in recent years, and situations like this one are part of the reason why. Let me explain just how absurd these charges are. The Patriots accused the Jets of tampering because when Woody Johnson made his comments he was speaking about a player that was a member of the New England Patriots. According to the rules this is a clear violation. Kraft’s comments, on the other hand, came after the deal was already made. He was simply reflecting on the past, whereas Johnson was speaking about the future. The difference between the two comments is astronomical, yet the Jets still felt the need to retaliate.
At this point, the New York Jets are just frustrated. When people are extremely frustrated they do weird things. They start to point fingers instead of taking accountability for their own ineptitude. They spend more time trying to break down those who are better than them than they do trying to build themselves up. The Revis deal in itself is a classic example of this. They threw $70 million dollars at a cornerback when they still don’t have a single player on their roster who can accurately throw a football. Why? Because it makes them contenders? Of course not. You can’t win in the NFL without a quarterback. By now the Jets understand that in order to someday be contenders, they first have to take down the team that has won their division 11 of the last 12 years. They’re nowhere near being able to accomplish this feat on the football field so for now they’ve turned to alternative methods. Taking away the Patriots’ best defensive player is certainly a start, but one big deal isn’t going to catapult a 4-12 team to the point where they can compete with the Super Bowl champions. That’s why they accused the Patriots of tampering. It’s pure frustration. I’m not sure what they’re hoping to accomplish with the accusations but at this point they’re just reaching for anything. They’re faced with the harsh reality that until Brady and Belichick are gone, New England will continue to rule the AFC East. In the meantime, the Jets are desperately looking for any small victories they can find like proving the Patriots are guilty of tampering. Unfortunately they have no evidence so it appears that they’ll have to chalk up these accusations as yet another loss.