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Darrelle Revis is officially a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The man who was responsible for getting the deal done is Mark Dominik. The Bucs GM feels he’s addressed some major team needs in the secondary and is confident that Revis will be ready by Week 1 of the NFL season. Tampa Bay is all in this season. The trade for Revis shows how serious this team is about competing for a Super Bowl, and now it’s up to Josh Freeman to lead this team to the promised land. Mark Dominik joined WDAE in Tampa with Steve Duemig to discuss the Buccaneers being excited about the Darrelle Revis trade, the impact of Revis on the Bucs’ defense, looking at Revis’ recovery from ACL surgery, Revis being excited to come to Tampa and Revis not holding out on the Buccaneers in the future.
Good job on the Darrelle Revis trade, huh?
“Thanks. Appreciate it. We’re real excited about it, I could tell you that. You can sense it in the building.”
What does Darrelle Revis bring that you guys didn’t have before on defense?
“Well, what it does is, he’s the premiere player at his position. He’s 27 years old and he’ll be 28 during the season. You gotta trust what we do with all the physicals and everything to make sure we were comfortable where we were at knowing he would be out there Week 1 against the Jets. It’s knowing you have a solid corner and (he’s) really regarded as the best defensive back in the National Football League, and to put him on your team was where the aggression came from. Generally, I understand what fans are saying with needing more of a pass rush and sacks. One of the things I would say is when you have a Darrelle Revis on your team, it creates a pause at quarterback and that’s a big thing. If Matt Ryan is out there looking over to his right and sees Roddy White has Darrelle Revis over him, is he thinking about Darrelle Revis over there? Is he spending the time thinking? Then, when the play takes off and he turns and looks at Roddy White and he sees the number 20 or whatever it is going to be, he sees that he’s well-covered and it is close, he is going to have to pause and the pause creates sacks. You can get it from a lot of different ways. Certainly elite pass-rushers can help and create havoc, but elite cornerbacks create a pause and that creates sacks, as well.”
How much work was put into reviewing Darrelle Revis’ health?
“Oh a lot. We spent a ton of time. … John Idzik, once we got close enough to getting the trade to come together and he faxed over the MRI he just recently took, which is probably the most important information you can have besides actually hands on from an orthopedic standpoint. The MRI tells a lot of stories and then your actual physical tells the rest. Those are really important. We’re very confident he’ll be on the field. The things that help us and give us confidence is where he is at in his ACL rehab is significant. He’s not three or four months into post-reconstructive surgery. He’s six or seven months into post-reconstructive surgery. The other thing we have is I hold our training staff into high regard, and they were just voted the best in the National Football League at what they do. Then you look around our team and Adrian Clayborn had an ACL about the same time that Darrelle Revis had, and I know where he is at and I am confident that he’s going to be out there for game one and I am confident Darrelle Revis will be, too.”
What does Darrelle Revis know about this team? How excited is he to come to Tampa?
“Darrelle looked at our team and he knew a lot of the players. He didn’t personally know them, but he knew of them. He played against them, but he knew Josh Freeman and Gerald McCoy. He knew those guys. But I think he looked at the roster the way we looked at the roster. Currently we have eight players on this team that have been to the Pro Bowl and three of those who are on the offensive line, two of whom didn’t get to play with Josh Freeman or for all the guys on offense like Vincent Jackson, to give him protection, or Doug Martin, and our guys stepped up last year. I’m excited to have him and Carl Nicks back on the field. I’m certainly excited about what we did in the secondary with DaShon Goldson and Darrelle Revis. Between the two of them, they have gone to six Pro Bowls, and both of them at a position where we obviously had to get stronger. We knew that going in and now we sit here a couple of days before the draft and it’s kind of what we said at the beginning. When we signed DaShon Goldson I said, ‘Let’s just wait until we get through the draft and then let’s look at this team and make an assessment of where we stand,’ and now I feel our secondary is starting to become a strength on this team.”
Do you believe Darrelle Revis will hold out on the Bucs in the future?
“I think our unique structure, with the way we do deals in Tampa, that helps us with this situation. Again, I think you are right. When you look at Darrelle Revis in general, it’s a series of one-year contracts at $16 million a year, and so every year he’s got $16 million in front of him to play. That’s why a holdout isn’t a concern at all. This is going to play out with we got a player that has motivation in front of him. The money is there, I believe, but he bet on himself, which I think is beautiful, and the agents understood that. They wanted to make it happen and that’s how this thing came together. You have a player with a lot of confidence and then in year four, like it was with the Jets, his base salary isn’t $3 million it’s $16 million still. That stops him from holding out.
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