Jets Trade Revis to Bucs

In a somewhat surprising move, the New York Jets have traded star cornerback Darelle Revis to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in exchange for the 13th overall pick in Thursday's Draft and a conditional pick in the 2014 Draft. The Buccaneers announced the deal on Sunday, saying Revis agreed to a new six-year contract. The deal is worth $96 million, making Revis the highest-paid defensive back in NFL history, but includes no guaranteed money, according to sources close to the Pro Bowl cornerback. The deal would make Revis one of the NFL's two highest-paid defensive players along with Mario Williams. With no money guaranteed to Revis by the Bucs, it gives Tampa room to work with financially if the contract doesn't work out the way they want.

Now with the trade and signing of Revis with the Bucs, its a double edge sword from my point of view. One the one hand the Jets are losing their best defensive player in sending Revis away. Now more of the pressure is going to be on Antonio Cromartie to be that shutdown guy with Revis being out of the equation. Revis had put plenty of fear into opposing wide receivers and made him even more dangerous.

On the other hand the move makes plenty of sense to let Revis go. At the end of this season he would have been a free agent and, depending on his play, who knows how much it might have ended up costing the Jets. They could have spent too much money trying to bring him back into the fold. They could have lost him to free agency and gotten nothing of value at all in return. Tampa Bay was the perfect fir for Revis and the Jets to be able to make this kind of move. Tampa Bay had plenty of cap space to be able to sign Revis to the big contract he wanted. And the Jets were able to get draft picks out of the deal so they would be able to rebuild.

As a Jets fan I hate so see Revis leave, because he has been so good in the secondary for the team. He has made a lot of key plays for the club at the right times and has been a big reason why the Jets were a success a few years back. At the same time though, he has also caused quite a few headaches over that same time span with contract disputes and holdouts. At times he looked like he would be more trouble than he's worth. So now he's Tampa's headache.

There are two interesting things that have come out of this story. One will be the reaction Revis gets when he is announced in the Tampa Bay lineup on kickoff weekend when the Bucs are in the Medowlands playing the Jets first game of the season. Also a little bit of interesting trivia to come out of this trade. The last time the Jets and Bucs made a deal was in 2000. Tampa Bay sent over their two first round pics in the 2000 NFL draft in order to pick up wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson. So the Jets and Bucs are not strangers when making deals with each other. This Revis trade looks to be helpful to both ball culbs not only now but in the future as well.