This is no time for Mike Tannenbaum (and Woody Johnson) to be picking up the telephone inquiring about Terrell Owens.
The only call they should be making — today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow — is to Darrelle Revis and his people.
Every waking hour inside the Atlantic Jets Health Training Center should be devoted to showing their best player enough money to avoid a holdout who could easily make this much ballyhooed Super Bowl-or-Bust season go bust.
Then again, if nothing else, the T.O. No development served to take the attention away, for a few hours of sports talk radio, from the Revis impasse.
What’s next? Mark Gastineau, with Brigitte Nielsen in tow, being summoned to help Rex Ryan get after the quarterback?
JetS fans who have been forced to panhandle to pay for PSLs in the new stadium — including those who were reluctantly offered 50 percent refunds — are in no mood to listen to ownership wails about the labor uncertainties that right now imperil the 2011 season. If Jet fans – and fans of the other 31 NFL teams — are operating under the belief that there will be football next season, then Johnson and his fellow NFL owners owe it to them to do the same.
Opportunity has never knocked this hard has been the Jets’ marketing campaign. It doesn’t knock hard at all without the best cornerback in the land.
Revis Island shouldn’t mean your best player should be thinking about standing on principle all alone and far away from teammates who worship his genius when the long, hot Hard Knocks summer begins in Cortland Sunday.
Embittering your best player, making him feel as though he has been betrayed, is no less folly than believing that T.O. No could have been one more piece of the reality show that is already the New York Jets. Just what a young franchise quarterback like Mark Sanchez needed, right? A faded 36-year-old narcissist who can turn young franchise quarterbacks gray overnight.
If there is one player who deserves a boatload of guaranteed money, it is Revis.
If there is one player who does not deserve to be insulted by having to wait for an offer of so much as a single guaranteed dollar, it is Revis.
Darrelle Revis can cover T.O. No in his sleep. Then again, so could plenty of other NFL cornerbacks. Carson Palmer wanted T.O. No? Well, he got him late yesterday. Ochocinco paired with Ocholoco.
If I were a betting man, I would bet that cooler heads will prevail at the 11th hour and the owners and players union will recognize the insanity of killing the golden goose, and there will be professional football next season. For the Patriots, it is no excuse for not paying Tom Brady. For the Colts, it is no excuse for not paying Peyton Manning. For the Jets, it is no excuse for not signing Darrelle Revis.
Now that T.O. now is a Bengal (one year, $2 million), Tannenbaum (and Johnson) must pick up the phone and call Revis and put an end to this madness and find a way to get this deal done. Not just for him. For his teammates. For the franchise. For the fans.