NFL Investigated New York Jets For Tampering In Order To Get Darrelle Revis Back

It seems that the New England Patriots are by no means going to take the loss of star cornerback Darrelle Revis lying down. In fact, they are going to complain until the cows come home about it because they feel that the New York Jets cheated the system in order to get Revis back. The Patriots went as far as to ask the NFL to investigate the Jets for tampering.

What kind of tampering you ask?

The Patriots complained to the NFL office shortly after Jets Owner Woody Johnson declared that he’d “love for Darrelle to come back.”

According to Boston.com, due to Johnson’s comments, “The Patriots quickly notified the league that they were charging the Jets with violating the NFL’s Anti-Tampering policy concerning the four-time All Pro free-agent cornerback.”

This seems innocent, considering Darrelle Revis ended up going on to win a Super Bowl with the New England Patriots shortly after the comments. The Patriots took it as a jab by the Jets to sort of put feelers out that they were interested in having Revis back in New York. On top of that, the letter of the law involving NFL tampering pretty much claims word for word that Johnson’s statement violated the rules.

Many say that New York overpaid for Revis, but it is not as if they haven’t done this before.

Darrelle Revis now has a Super Bowl ring. One would imagine that having him come back to New England would only help the Patriots compete for a Super Bowl again next year. Revis helped the Patriots immensely in the secondary and made the defense tough to beat. So why leave if you know you can be with a proven winner the following year?

Answer, money.

The Patriots simply didn’t want to pay Darrelle Revis what the Jets were willing to pay, which ended up being a five-year, $70 million deal.

The NFL took the issues from New England seriously and decided to look into the claims regardless, but they did it quite late.

The New York Daily News claims, “A league investigator traveled to the Jets facility in Florham Park, N.J., on March 8 to question General Manager Mike Maccagnan and other front office employees. Johnson was reportedly not interrogated.”

This was the day many reports surfaced about potential free-agent deals, even though teams were prohibited from making any deals until the official start of the free agency period on March 10. Revis ended up signing to his five year deal on the first official day of free agency.

You could make the argument that Darrelle Revis had talks with the Jets and an offer on the board before the 10th of March. Which would, in turn, be against the rules.

So did the NFL simply choose to overlook any wrongdoing? Did they not question the owner on purpose?

While the New England Patriots are obviously not Boy Scouts who follow every rule to the letter, they do have a point. However, what would be done about it? The Jets would have to pay a fine for tampering and getting Darrelle Revis? It’s New York, they’ll bounce back. The Patriots complaining over rules being violated also doesn’t help as they are not known for being the best at following them. Was this the league’s way of getting back at them?

Currently, it appears as if the NFL didn’t find any issues with what the Jets did. Again, even if they did….would this complaint have truly cost New York enough that the Darrelle Revis signing wasn’t worth the penalty?

[IMG Credits: Boston.com, nypost.com]