Darrelle Revis only spent one season in New England and although it ended up being a highly successful year that ended with a Super Bowl win, he definitely didn’t seem to enjoy himself very much.
During a recent interview on the “I Am Athlete” podcast, Revis was asked about his time in New England and let’s just say that he didn’t have any trouble hiding his feelings. One of the first questions Revis was asked during the podcast was if he enjoyed his lone season with the Patriots.
“No, I did not,” Revis said, via CBS Boston.
Revis spent most of his 11-year career with the Jets, but in 2014, he signed a one-year deal with the Patriots. During the 2014 season, Revis started all 16 games for a team that would eventually beat the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX, but not even that was enough to keep him happy.
After spending a year with the Patriots, Revis got out in a hurry. The cornerback returned to the Jets in 2015 and one reason he left in New England is because of the atmosphere. Not only did he hate it in the locker room, but he said that it’s not just him: According to Revis, no one really enjoys playing for the Patriots.
“When you deal with the things up there, it’s a little bit strenuous and nobody likes it in the locker room,” Revis said. “That’s to be honest — nobody. Nobody likes it!”
Revis then pointed to Tom Brady as someone who looks much happier after leaving New England.
“If you look at Tom right now, he’s having the best time of his career, because he’s in Tampa, he’s down there having a great time,” Revis said.
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The laid back atmosphere in Tampa is the opposite of the tension-filled locker room that exists in New England and that tension is one reason why no one likes playing for the Patriots.
“When you play with the New England Patriots, it’s a lot of pressure every time you walk in the door, because there’s a lot of tension,” Revis said. “There’s a lot of noise going on in the background, where how the team is ran, it’s the unknown. You just don’t know — you don’t know what Mr. Kraft’s doing, you don’t know what Bill’s doing, you just don’t know.”
Revis got sick of all the tension after just one year, which is why he didn’t return.
“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,” Revis said.
Although the cornerback respects Bill Belichick, he definitely wasn’t a fan of playing for him.
“You see why they’ve been in 10 Super Bowls, you see the hustle and the grind of it,” Revis said. “But at the end of the day, there’s other philosophies to win. And it doesn’t have to be that way. I mean you got 32 teams with 32 coaches. Some are intense, some look at things another way, and there’s different philosophies to win the game.”
It should be noted that Revis isn’t the only one who feels this way about playing for the Patriots. Back in 2018, Cassius Marsh said that he hated playing for the Patriots. One of Marsh’s biggest complaints is that the team “treats players like crap.” Also in 2018, Lane Johnson called out the Patriots for being a “fear-based organization” where players don’t have any fun.
Of course the flip side to that argument is that if winning if fun, then the Patriots have been having a lot of fun over the past 20 years, which is one reason why they’re able to still woo free agents.
