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It’s time for another edition of “One Jets Drive,” with notes on David Gerrard, Darrelle Revis and some former Jets. Let’s get it started . . .
You hear the names of some of the free agent quarterbacks that are possibilities for the Jets, and they have 8-8, 7-9 written all over them.
David Gerrard is a good man, and a warrior, but he’s a .500 or worse quarterbacks. So are Jason Campbell and Brady Quinn.
Maybe Marty Morninweg and David Lee, both quarterback gurus, feel they can get more out of these guys than other coaches . . .
With Calvin Pace, Bart Scott and Eric Smith now out the door, there seems to be a negative stigma attached to all three former Jets.
It just seems a little unfair. Were they stars? No, but they weren’t bums either.
We reached out to a source close to the Jets for his educated take on these three former Jets.
“I think all were good players to very good players but not great, which especially in Pace’s and Scott’s case hurt them over the last two years as they were tarred along with everyone else as the Jets fell away from their lofty heights,” said the league source.
“Pace was the best pass rusher the Jets had in his five years there,” said the source. “He never complained, but he seemed to feel like if he were used like DeMarcus Ware or Cameron Wake, he could put up numbers similar to theirs, but that’s not what they asked Pace to do so he played his role. I wonder why the Jets didn’t use him more in that role.
“Ross Tucker said this morning that Mike Pettine told him that he’d prefer Revis to a big pass rusher because with Revis, it was kind of like playing with 12 players on defense, getting the safeties to throw themselves into other areas because they never had to provide help over the top on DR’s side. But if that’s so, why wouldn’t they try to turn Pace loose when Darrelle was healthy? Not sure.
“Bart Scott had some very productive years with the Jets. Like Pace, Bart excelled at one thing, playing behind or at the line of scrimmage, but for whatever reasons, he never got the credit for leading the Jets in tackles for loss for most of those years.
“Many in the media wouldn’t want to acknowledge, it but Bart was a very good locker room guy in my opinion. I believe players look up to those loud talkers who are willing to talk loud to “the man,” and so show the other guys he’s got their backs.
“Writers in general don’t understand this. They think they should have carte blanche to ask impertinent questions and then write impertinent stories and then come back with their short term memory loss as if everything is peachy. But I think Bart did his best to reach these guys at least for his first three years.
“Eric Smith, like the other two, was very good at one thing — special teams. He was the Jets top special team’s tackler since he arrived in ’06, even though some years he wasn’t used as much to cover kicks as other years. Very smart guy, very tough too.” . . .
A league source, probably somebody with the San Francisco 49ers, told Chris Mortensen today that 49ers aren’t interested in pursuing a Revis trade right now.
It’s clearly too early for anybody to make a Revis trade. He’s still knee-deep, so to speak, in his rehab.
If something happens, it will likely be around the draft, when he’s closer to 100 percent.
Or it’s possible it will come closer to the summer, and picks the Jets get will be in next year’s draft. Closer to the summer, he should be 100 percent.
But you know what, they can always trade him in season, before the trading deadeline, to a team that loses a starting corner.
The worst case scenario is he plays for the Jets this year (which isn’t so bad – he’s a great player), and he walks after the season, and they get a third-round pick in the supplemental draft.
The bottom line is this – we are very early in the process when it comes to a potential Revis trade – very early . . .
February 28, 2013
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