Why Darrelle Revis didn’t like playing for Pats despite SB victory originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
Winning cures all, right? Not necessarily for Darrelle Revis.
The former Pro Bowl cornerback spent one season with the New England Patriots in 2014 and emerged with a Super Bowl ring, his only championship in his 11-year NFL career. But despite that successful outcome, Revis apparently didn’t have many fond memories from that season.
“Nobody likes it in the locker room. Just being honest, nobody likes it,” Revis said on a new episode of the “I Am Athlete” podcast.
When co-host Channing Crowder asked Revis if winning perhaps made him enjoy his Patriots experience a little more, the retired cornerback doubled down.
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“No, I did not,” Revis said. “You know, I’m happy for the grind and the hustle of winning Super Bowl 49, but you know waking up every day and walking into the facility and having to deal with the tension, you see why they’ve been to ten Super Bowls. You see the hustle and the grind of it, but at the end of the day, there’s other philosophies to win and it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Revis isn’t the only ex-Patriot with this opinion of New England. Former linebacker Cassius Marsh said recently that the Patriots treat their players “like crap,” while running back LeGarrette Blount noted his experiences in New England and Philadelphia were “night and day.”
Revis also pointed out the cultural differences between Bill Belichick’s Patriots and the Jets under Rex Ryan, who coached Revis for five seasons in New York. And while the Jets were barely above .500 during those five seasons, Revis still preferred that culture to New England.
“Rex is a little bit more loose,” Revis said. “He likes dogs, he wants you to go out there and play hard, run into a wall, that’s fine. But there’s a lot of news going on right now with Bill, in terms of him and (Patriots owner) Mr. (Robert) Kraft, and there’s a lot of stuff surfacing right now.
“…When you play with the New England Patriots, there’s a lot of pressure every time you walk in the door because it’s a lot of tension, it’s a lot of noise going on in the background where, [with] how the team is [run], it’s unknown. You don’t know what Mr. Kraft is doing; you don’t know what Bill’s doing.”
As former Patriots wide receiver Deion Branch said recently, New England “isn’t for every player.” Reports about tension between Belichick, Kraft and former quarterback Tom Brady notwithstanding, Revis clearly falls into the camp of players who would rather be elsewhere — even if it means less team success.