Jets get a slap on the wrist from NFL for Darrelle Revis tampering

I’m not sure of your financial situation, but someone fining me $100,000 would be a pretty big deal.

To New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, he probably spends more time worrying about which green tie he’ll wear than a $100,000 fine. The NFL surely knows this.

So the big punishment for tampering with Darrelle Revis, a $100,000 fine to the Jets according to multiple reports, really isn’t much of a punishment at all. Johnson, who made inappropriate comments about Revis returning to the Jets while he was under contract with the New England Patriots, can add $100,000 onto the price tag for signing Revis. Revis’ contract was more than $70 million. Earlier this year Johnson sold a New York apartment that he might not have even lived in for $77.5 million. He’s not missing $100,000.

The NFL’s tampering rules are a bit strange anyway. Via NFL.com, the anti-tampering rule, as it relates to comments made in the media, says “Any public or private statement of interest, qualified or unqualified, in another club’s player to that player’s agent or representative, or to a member of the news media, is a violation of the Anti-Tampering Policy.” It’s pretty hard to define “statement of interest,” if a team really wanted to be difficult it could argue that any praise by an opponent for a player on their team as violating that policy.

What Johnson did, however, wasn’t vague at all.

“Darrelle is a great player and if I had thought I could have gotten Darrelle for that, I probably would have taken him back,” Johnson said, before Revis was a free agent. “It was our best judgment to do what we did. But Darrelle’s a great player.”

“I’d love Darrelle to come back.”

Yet, it’s not like the Jets being interested in Revis was a big shock, considering he’s one of the NFL’s best players and started his career with the Jets. It’s foolish to think that Johnson’s comments ultimately mattered to where Revis went. But the Patriots were upset, especially because the Jets are a rival, and filed the tampering charges shortly after. Perhaps the NFL should look into changing its tampering rules, because it seems like a bit of a waste to cast such a wide net.

The $100,000 fine is an admission that Johnson was wrong and violated the rules. But the NFL obviously didn’t think it was so bad that it would give Johnson a punishment that would bother him much.

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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab