FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — After uttering the words he hoped he would not have to say, Rex Ryan looked down at the lectern and away from the cameras. A second went by. Then two. Then three, as if by taking time to collect his thoughts Ryan would somehow reverse the harsh sentence rendered Monday, when tests confirmed that the All-Pro cornerback Darrelle Revis had torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee and would require surgery, ending his season after three games.
“I don’t know what else to say about it,” Ryan said.
Ryan just stood there, his face ashen, but the words eventually flowed from the coach’s mouth like a lazy river. He spoke of resilience and teamwork and adversity, how he and his coaching staff accepted Revis’s injury as “a personal challenge” to revitalize a team that had lost its best and most indispensable player. But Ryan did not address, at least not directly, that murky area between popular perception and harsh reality — that Revis’s absence deals the 2-1 Jets a potentially devastating blow, weakening not only their defense but also their playoff hopes.
“I have all the respect in the world for Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers and Peyton Manning, but Darrelle’s the best player in the league,” said the former San Francisco cornerback Eric Davis, an analyst on NFL Network. “No other player goes out with those expectations on him every single week and produces like he does. No one has a tougher assignment week in, week out than Revis. Brady and Rodgers and Manning throw interceptions. Revis doesn’t make mistakes.”
