We've got a few weeks to kill before the next big movement of the NFL offseason.
The draft looms at the end of the month, which means that the coming days will be filled with stories about interest in Player X and meetings with Player Y as everyone tells their lies in hopes of shrouding their true intentions under 1000 feet of sewage. And with that lovely image in your mind, we turn our attention to the Jets.
A couple of stories about a couple of very different players have broken in the last couple of days. They are stories in the loosest possible definition of the word, more like confirmation of things you already assumed that are being used to extend two dramas well past their expiration date.
Different players are at the center of each tale, but the stories are essentially the same. It's the Jets doing their version of the posturing presented above at a moment when everyone knows what they'll wind up doing.
One is that Darrelle Revis and the team are at odds over the Jets' desire to see him show up for the start of the team's offseason activities on April 15th while Revis would like to remain in Arizona to rehab his ACL. There's a workout bonus of a couple of million dollars involved so Revis is unsurprisingly expected to be there come Monday, but the implication that the Jets need him to show up to convince bidders that they need to pay up in a trade is a bit silly.
If the Jets were really open to the idea of keeping Revis, they'd be fine with having him come to Jersey for a medical check and then head back to Arizona if they were happy with how things were progressing. They probably wouldn't even need that because they probably would be in touch with a player they were actually going to keep long before the middle of April.
Right now, it looks like the Revis trade is going to come down to whether or not the Jets can gin up another bidder to force the Bucs' hand. While Tampa's offering a first-round pick, the Jets reportedly want more and their best way to get that will be another bidder.
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There's also a report that the Bucs are getting impatient, but that's just their version of the disinformation game everyone plays this time of year. The market offers no one close to Revis and the Bucs desperately need a corner to anchor what was an awful pass defense last season.
John Idzik knows that and he knows that he's trading Revis somewhere. There's no reason to do it until you're closer to the draft, but the other gyrations are just window dressing.
When Revis gets to those workouts, he'll see Tim Tebow there. Yes, Tebow's still on the roster because the Jets are, ahem, exploring options to trade him and he plans to join the team next week.
Those options don't exist and aren't likely to exist barring an NFL decision to outlaw the forward pass, but the workouts are voluntary and Tebow certainly isn't going to put himself in a spot where he's not reporting to work. Why the team doesn't just go ahead and release him is a mystery, but Tebow's entire Jets tenure has been a mystery so perhaps the idea is to just continue not fixing something that's always been broken.
It's all drama, albeit not up to the Jets' usual standard of lurid fare that helps you ignore for a minute that the football team itself just isn't that good. That may be an impossible standard to reach given the current state of affairs.
Josh Alper is also a writer for Pro Football Talk. You can follow him on Twitter.
