NFL

Jets’ first-time GM must get every last chip from Tampa

So now comes word the Buccaneers are not so desperate for Darrelle Revis that they are willing to part with a third-round pick in addition to a first and a fifth.

It could be brinksmanship, it could be the Bucs believing owner Woody Johnson is the desperado obsessed with trading Revis, it could be they are trying to snooker rookie Jets GM John Idzik.

He’s new in town, so I offer the following unsolicited advice for him:

Do not cave.

Do not blink.

Call the Bucs’ bluff, if that’s what this is, and insist on that third-rounder, or inform the Bucs that they can try to stop Drew Brees and Matt Ryan twice a year without Revis Island.

It is a gamble, to be sure, but you do not trade Darrelle Revis, your best player and asset, for a first and a fifth, even if he is still rehabbing a torn ACL, even if the world knows that Johnson does not want to pay him. Especially when the Seahawks surrendered a first and a seventh this year and a third rounder next year for WR Percy Harvin, an immense talent and headache. If Idzik must, he should accept the three or the five next season to get the deal done. And promise he won’t demand that Tim Tebow be included in the deal.

In the meantime, between now and the NFL Draft one week from tonight, he should get another team involved in trade talks if he can. Make the Bucs sweat. Don’t let them see you sweat.

It is the Jets fan who is sweating in the meantime, of course. You know who you are, and you know what that means. It means the Mud Bowl, it means the Fake Spike, it means the Kotite Era, it means Richard Todd and Neil O’Donnell and Browning Nagel and Brett Favre and Tebow, it means Vinny Testaverde tearing his Achilles in the 1999 season opener, it means the Buttfumble, it means so precious little Life After Super Bowl III.

It means you worry that Johnson and Idzik will lose this game of chicken.

You worry that Johnson and Idzik will blow it.

You worry that their strategy will work as well as Tony Sparano’s 2012 Wildcat.

You worry that the Bucs will tire of waiting for Johnson and Idzik to pull the trigger on the deal and use their 13th pick on a cornerback and leave the Jets forced to pay a disgruntled Revis or risk losing him for nothing — to the Patriots or Giants, of course — at the end of the 2013 season.

You are a Jets fan, so the burden of proof is on Idzik, to prove to you that he is more than a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil brainiac, that he is one cool customer at the poker table, one tough negotiator, as well.

It is unfortunate for Idzik that he walked face-first into the Revis trade rumors the very first day he walked into the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center, but that’s life at the Jets, aka Leaks R Us.

Idzik met the media yesterday, and the next time you read the words “Idzik revealed” will be the first time. That’s the way you operate when you are forced to make chicken salad out of chicken-you-know-what in a high-stakes game of chicken. Maybe a week from now, the owner will force him to chicken out. But now is not the time to lay an egg.