Interesting:
Revis is elite and irreplaceable
Shaun Assael's excellent profile of Darrelle Revis, just out in ESPN the Magazine, is a story about a man meeting his moment. The Jets cornerback had one long highlight reel of a season last year, peaking as his team surpassed expectations and made it to the AFC Championship Game, and he's just settling into the lifestyle of a New York superstar.
So is Revis worth the contract extension he wants, one that would pay him something like the $15.2 million per year that Oakland CB Nnamdi Asomugha gets?
It would be hard to post better raw numbers than Revis posted in 2009, when he gave up an absurdly low 3.6 yards per pass attempt and just two touchdowns. 3.6 YPA is what a quarterback would get if he completed just 50 percent of his throws while gaining only 7.2 yards per completion. As far as I can tell, Revis' figure is the lowest attained by any defensive back since analysts began tracking this stat. For purposes of comparison, at his peak in 2007, the outstanding Champ Bailey gave up 4.7 YPA.
You can't dump short throws at Revis (4.0 YPA in 2009 on passes of zero to nine yards), or throw medium passes at him (10-19 yards: 4.2 YPA), yet longer attempts are just suicidal. Opposing QBs were a ridonkulous 2 for 27 on attempts of 20 yards or more against him last year, for just 53 yards, with one TD and three INTs.
Of course, there's a lot of debate about how much credit Revis deserves for neutralizing opponents' passing games, and how much should go to Rex Ryan's defensive plans. On June 10, Insider's K.C. Joyner triggered an Internet dustup with a piece called "Elite? Yes. Irreplaceable? No." Joyner argued that "in the worst-case scenario of a long-term Revis holdout, New York could place [Dwight] Lowery on the field opposite [Antonio] Cromartie and start first-round pick Kyle Wilson at the nickel," giving the Jets one of the NFL's best secondaries even without Revis. A week later, Joyner slammed critics of his view as "ill-informed," noting that the Jets are deep in DBs and that a "Ryan defense" doesn't require a shutdown corner.
As you might imagine, I disagree.
There are two problems with assuming that Revis is just a very talented cog in the Jets' wheel. One should be obvious, but the people arguing over Revis keep missing it, so here goes: When evaluating other players on the Jets who are helped by the team, Revis is part of that team! Joyner notes, for example, that Lowery finished second in the league in YPA, and that Lito Sheppard was also in the top 20. "That alone indicates just how much ... Ryan's scheme helps cornerbacks ... [Sheppard] went from posting one of the worst YPA totals in the league to one of the best, yet the Jets sat him down in the playoffs and let him go after the season ... it was the scheme more than his physical skills that accounted for Sheppard's improvement."
Well, as Tonto might have asked, "What do you mean, 'Scheme,' white man?" Or as an irate blogger at AFCBeast.com did ask, "How can you discount the fact that locking down one side of the field for coverage and the ... effect that has on how you run the rest of your defense? If Revis is alone, then the safety is rolling the other way, something we saw Ryan do again and again...Providing cover-one help away from Revis much of the time, guess whose numbers would get a bump? Oh right."
Revis played every game, switching from side to side to cover the opponent's top receiver, while Ryan mixed and matched Sheppard, Lowery, Drew Coleman and Donald Strickland opposite him, with safeties often helping them. And the Jets' 2009 schedule stacked Revis up against elite receivers nearly every week: Andre Johnson, Randy Moss twice, Marques Colston, Terrell Owens twice, Mike Sims-Walker, the Panthers' Steve Smith, Roddy White, Reggie Wayne and, of course, Chad Ochocinco. Against the rest of the NFL, those wideouts averaged 5.1 catches and 75.5 yards per game and scored 91 touchdowns. Against Revis, they went 2.9-26.4 and scored just two TDs all year.
With all due respect to Joyner, you can't just take the fact that Revis and Lito Sheppard have similar yard-per-catch numbers and infer that they're equally or even similarly replaceable. Sheppard benefitted from the Jets' scheme, just as Cromartie will, and Wilson will, too. Revis is the scheme.
One area where the Jets' playcalling does have a huge effect on Revis' stats is in the number of passes thrown to him. Revis not only led the league in YPA, he snuffed out passes when they mattered: Football Outsiders calculates a "Success Rate" for defenders, which is the percentage of passes that don't get at least 45 percent of the needed yards on first down, 60 percent on second down, or 100 percent on third down, and Revis topped the NFL in that, too, with a 72 percent success rate. He also gave up just 2.4 yards per catch after receptions, which ranked eighth in the league. Yet opposing teams threw more than 100 times at Revis anyway, four times as many passes as were directed as Asomugha. Clearly, Ryan's endless blitzing forces opposing QBs to throw when and where they don't want to. (Revis must also do a pretty good job of allowing receivers to appear open, then blanketing them once balls are in the air.) It's like baserunners not being able to stop themselves from challenging Roberto Clemente's arm, then getting themselves thrown out again and again.
I wish we could better quantify the impact Revis has, both on plays he's involved in and plays that other teams funnel away from him. But at the moment, I can't say with confidence that Revis saves a particular marginal number of points, let alone how many dollars those points are worth. Football plays and players are intertwined in extremely complex ways that metricians are still sorting out, and analysts can't even see the entire field when charting games. But we can say that the Jets defense was the best in the NFL by the end of last year, that it was keyed by a passing defense that was a staggering 34.2 percent better than average on a play-by-play basis, and that Revis was the linchpin of that defense.
And here's a stat that's just as importance as Revis' production: He's just 24. In contrast, the highest-paid defenders in the league, such as Albert Haynesworth, Terrell Suggs and DeMarcus Ware, are 27 to 30 years old. Asomugha is 28. Revis' combination of performance and youth is probably the best in the NFL, regardless of position. In fact, Outsiders' Bill Barnwell has pegged Revis' trade value as the highest in the league. (He puts Peyton Manning at No. 2.) Lock Revis up now, and the Jets will keep him through his best seasons, rather than paying him big money just after his peak, which is what happens with so many free agents. Let him go in a couple of years, and he'll be especially hard to replace over the long haul.
In the NFL, there are plenty of creative ways to write contracts whose average pay or total three-year value satisfies players while keeping cap values manageable for teams. Which means Revis will probably end up somewhere between Asante Samuel ($9.5 million a year, $23.6 million guaranteed, $32.1 million over three years) and Asomugha on the compensation scale.
The Jets have been fearless about turning over their roster and shedding contracts. But understanding that most players are replaceable only helps a team if it's willing to sign the very few who aren't.
Source: ESPN.com Insider - Revis is elite and irreplaceable
http://insider.espn.go.com/insider/b...ter&id=5342665
