Salary negotiations are always an adversarial process in which both sides must bend or like a knot in a rope, the knot only becomes tighter if both sides continue to pull.

In the case of Darrelle Revis, cooler heads prevailed.

One would think that General Manager Mike Tannenbaum would have been the one to fix this problem.

He didn't.

Rather New York Jet principal owner Woody Johnson and head coach Rex Ryan made the trek to South Florida to meet with their disgruntled superstar and get him back on the playing field.

It was simply the right thing to do.

That proactive approach to making Darrelle Revis feel important versus the failed salary tactics of Tannenbaum worked and according to published reports, Darrelle Revis will be green in money as well as in uniform with what amounts to a one-year contract extension and an $11 million dollar increase in guaranteed dollars, up from the original $21 million in his old contract. 

So instead of trying to isolate Darrelle Revis as some problem player who is simply greedy, Johnson and Ryan did the right thing by opening up their check book to secure an investment in the present as well as the future.

 

For Woody Johnson and Rex Ryan realize what GM Mike Tannenbaum does not and that the patience of the New York Jet fan is worn out.

They want to win now.

Overpriced PSL's in a bad economy aside, Jet fans would not tolerate a season opening loss to a probable playoff opponent and quite possibly the team to beat in the AFC this season in the Baltimore Ravens. What would have made such a loss intolerable would be Darrelle Revis playing video games versus covering Raven receivers and ensuring the kind of coverage that has made him the NFL's premier, shutdown corner.

More importantly, it doesn't take a head coach to figure out that with Joe Flacco, Tom Brady and Brett Favre coming to the Meadowlands in consecutive weeks, the prospect of these elite signal callers shredding the Jets secondary without Darrelle Revis and a reliable pass rush was a gamble not worth taking.

In the end, Darrelle Revis won.

But he won because he was right, not because he was greedy and not because the Jets didn't need him to win.

Someone needs to explain to Mike Tannenbaum that the position of general manager is not that of dictator or some weird comparison to Donald Trump in "The Apprentice."

 

It is Tannenbaum's job to ensure that the team he's placed together will win and those most responsible for that winning culture be compensated, the same way his contract was extended before this whole debacle began in the first place!

If Tannenbaum wants to truly succeed as a general manager in the NFL, he needs to see the players as allies, not as spare parts that can be replaced by the next name that appears on the waiver wire.

For it took maturity and reason to get Darrelle Revis signed, sealed and delivered.

Thank goodness Woody Johnson and Rex Ryan display those characteristics.