Analysis
8/2/23
8 min read
NFL Hall of Fame Profile: Is Darrelle Revis Greatest Cornerback of All Time?
By definition, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame is labeled as great.
But there are levels of greatness.
Greatest of All Time?
For example, when it comes to cornerbacks, few would argue against Deion Sanders belonging at the very top of those at the position with bronze busts in Canton.
That is unless the one making the argument is Mike Tannenbaum. He was the general manager of the New York Jets in 2007 when they used a first-round draft pick, 14th overall, on a cornerback from the University of Pittsburgh named Darrelle Revis.
On Saturday, Revis will be one of nine new inductees to the Hall of Fame. While his place in the shrine won’t be any more prominent than that of the 300-plus other players honored there, Tannenbaum, for one, will always see Revis as a cut above.
“My opinion, completely biased, I think he’s the greatest corner of all time,” said Tannenbaum, an analyst for The 33rd Team. “Deion may have been a little bit of a better athlete, but I don’t think he was a better football player. Darrelle was more physical than Deion. And when you consider that part of your job description is tackling, I think, in my opinion, he will go down as the greatest corner to ever play.”
Making the Case
Tannenbaum’s case has support. In the history of the Hall, only 11 cornerbacks have been selected on the first ballot. Revis is one of them. He also was a seven-time Pro Bowl selection and a four-time First-Team All-Pro.
Opposing quarterbacks widely avoided throwing in Revis’ direction. Why take the risk? That is the primary reason he didn’t have prolific numbers in college or as a pro. He finished his 11 NFL seasons, including stints with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs, with 29 interceptions and 139 passes defended.
Revis wasn’t your classic ball hawk. “My superpower was not letting receivers catch the ball,” he once told reporters.
You want physical? In his career, he finished with 496 combined tackles and 12 fumble recoveries.
“And you could put him inside and have him blitz, which you can’t do with all cornerbacks,” said Eric Mangini, the Jets’ head coach for Revis’ first two seasons before being replaced by Rex Ryan. “He gave you versatility. That’s rare in a corner and the completeness, which includes the ability to blitz him off the slot. Some cornerbacks blitz, but they aren’t meaningful blitzes because they don’t get to the quarterback. Darrelle could bring some heat.”
Landing Rookie Revis
Yet, for all that Revis accomplished as a pro, the Jets weren’t quite sure of exactly what they would be getting when he decided to leave Pittsburgh after his junior year and enter the 2007 draft.
“Candidly, we had a lot of question marks because he played in the old Big East, and he was a late-declaring junior,” Tannenbaum said. “And that year, there weren’t very many good receivers, so we just didn’t have a lot of information on him. But what we did see was a guy that had tremendous physical strength. He was a rare combination of somebody who could really jam and be physical but who could also run. Typically, you see corners that are really effective because they can either be physical or they can run, but he was someone who could actually do both. I think that’s what really set him apart from others.”
The turning point in the Jets’ evaluation of Revis came during the Pittsburgh Panthers’ Pro Day. Terry Bradway, a Jets scout, attended the session. The Jets, who owned the 25th pick in the 2007 draft, had locked into the decision to choose a cornerback in the first round.
After watching Revis’ performance, Bradway headed to the airport, from where he made a phone call to Tannenbaum.
“Hey, just so you know, there’s zero percent chance he’s gonna be there if we stay at 25,” Bradway said. “So, if this is our guy, we better make a plan to trade up.”
Class Act Through and Through
To make certain Revis was their guy, more research was needed. That meant getting to know him better as a person.
“We had an unbelievable visit with him,” Tannenbaum said. “And we felt great about his character. We spent a lot of time with him because he was a guy we just didn’t have a lot of information on because he was a little bit under the radar heading into the season, which is so weird to say. That just doesn’t happen anymore. But we felt he was our type of guy, not only on the field but off the field.”
Revis continues to display those qualities. Consider this comment he made in a video produced by the Pro Football Hall of Fame:
“During my playing career, it was a lot of tunnel vision for me. I wasn’t really thinking about such an accolade as getting the highest honor in football of being a Pro Football Hall of Famer. It was always for me doing it for the next generation.”
There were two other cornerbacks in the 2007 draft the Jets liked, Leon Hall of Michigan and Aaron Ross of Texas. They, too, would be first-round picks, Hall to Cincinnati at No. 18 and Ross to the Giants at No. 20.
But the Jets saw Revis as the biggest prize at the position. Tannenbaum said a collective decision – involving Mangini, assistant director of personnel JoJo Wooden and director of college scouting Joey Clinkscales – was made to move up.
The Jets found a trade partner in the Carolina Panthers, who had the 14th choice. The price for swapping places was two picks, one in the second and one in the fifth. In hindsight, it was a steal.
Excellence From the Jump
When did the Jets know they had something special in Revis?
“In minicamp,” Tannenbaum said. “It was literally one of those guys like, Day 1, Practice 1, Rep 1. Like, he was the best player on the field. The other thing about him that people don’t realize and a real privilege of mine, he was an unbelievable practice player. When somebody completed a pass against him, he absolutely hated it.
“Off the field, there’s like a real sort of sweetness to him and almost like an introvert. But on the field, we say it way too much in scouting that we want world-class competitors, but the thrill that I had was watching him in practice. He would get into fights. In one-on-ones, he would literally change the line of scrimmage because he was so confident in his ability to be in the trail position that I just remember him getting in the breastplates of wide receivers. It was like nobody else would do that.
“When Rex got there, he was always talking about the need for corners and how valuable they are. But I think, really, what was so different about Darrelle was Darrelle’s ability to take the opponent’s best receiver out of the game. Typically, what Rex wanted to do was take Darrelle and play him man-to-man against the second-best receiver and then double the best. But because Darrelle was so good, he could literally take half the field all by himself.”
Crowning Achievements
Though it didn’t happen with the Jets, Tannenbaum was thrilled Revis won a Super Bowl during his one season with the Patriots in 2014-15. Revis’ contribution to that championship season was significant, given he received his fourth All-Pro selection and first since 2011 with the Jets. He also had an interception in the AFC Championship Game win against the Indianapolis Colts and a sack against the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl.
“No question about it, he’s a champion, and deservedly so,” Tannenbaum said. “But he was a champion in the weight room; he was a champion in every part of the process because he had the ability and the desire to be great. Sometimes they may have one or the other, but not both.”
It’s fair to say that, as an NFL player, Darrelle Revis had it all.
Vic Carucci has been a national editor for NFL.com and a contributor to NFL Network, a senior editor for the Cleveland Browns and an NFL writer and columnist for the Buffalo News. Follow him on Twitter at @viccarucci.
