Darrelle Revis may have won a Super Bowl as a member of the New England Patriots, but that doesn't mean he holds the team - or head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady - in particularly high regard.
Woody Johnson's prodigal son returned home this offseason to the New York Jets and he seems to already be getting into the swing of that whole AFC East divisional rival thing.
Revis spoke recently with Manish Mehta of The New York Daily News and took the opportunity to offer his thoughts on the Deflategate scandal and the revelation that Brady, the future surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer, "more probably than not" was "generally aware" of the purposeful deflation of footballs to be used by the Pats offense during their AFC Championship Game victory over the Indianapolis Colts.
"New England's been doing stuff in the past and getting in trouble," Revis said per Mehta. "When stuff repeatedly happens, then that's it. I don't know what else to tell you. Stuff repeatedly happened through the years. You got SpyGate, you got this and that and everything else. Obviously in those situations in the past, they had the evidence. So they did what they needed to do."
SpyGate was another scandal involving the Patriots and taping defensive Jets defensive signals during a game in 2007. It resulted in a $500,000 fine for Belichick, a $250,000 fine for New England and the loss of their first-round pick in the 2008 NFL Draft.
Deflategate has seemingly become a media monster of epic proportions, dwarfing the hubbub which surrounded SpyGate - though, there's probably a fair amount of recency bias at play here.
Still, while the punishments for the Pats this time around may seem particularly harsh - the loss of a 2016 first-round pick, a 2017 fourth-round pick, a $1 million fine for the franchise and the suspension of Brady for the first four games of the 2015 season - Revis agrees with the league's assertion that New England's status as repeat offenders make Deflategate even more significant.
"Everybody's blowing it up because it is Tom Brady," Revis said. "I understand that. But if (the NFL) feels he did the crime or he did something and they want to penalize them, then that's that. (The Patriots) have a history of doing stuff. You can't hide that.... Tom was there when they did that stuff in the past."
The All Pro corner said that Brady's stature within the NFL community should have no bearing on his recently filed suspension appeal.
"If I fail a drug test, then I fail a drug test. If I get a DUI, I get a DUI," Revis said. "If Tom gets caught with a DUI, it's a DUI. .... If they are saying that he did what he's done, then the suspension is the suspension. I'm not the commissioner and don't make the rules. If they want to change (the suspension) based on new information or new evidence, then okay, but it should have nothing to do with Tom being the face (of the NFL)."
