When Mike Zmijanac saw the skinny sophomore that first day of summer football workouts back in 2001, he figured the kid had to be joking. He knew all about Darrelle Revis, of course, because around Aliquippa, Pa., it was impossible to have coached as long as Zmijanac and not be intimately familiar with one of the town’s proudest athletic families.
Revis’ father had played football at Aliquippa in the ’80s, and his mother had been a star track performer. One uncle, Sean Gilbert, went on to a 13-year career in the NFL with the Rams, Redskins, Panthers and Raiders and another uncle, Mark, played basketball at Duquesne. That was Darrelle’s game, too. Or so Zmijanac — who at the time coached both football and basketball for the Quips — thought.
“What the heck are you doing here?” Zmijanac asked.
“I figured I’d come and check this out,” the kid said, shaking his head.
It is a memory that stays with Zmijanac all these years later mostly because of another conversation that coach and player would have two years later, once the scholarship offers started to arrive and it became clear that football was going to have to be more than an offseason hobby.
“Look, there are 10 point guards in New York City alone who are better than you,” Zmijanac told Revis. “But there aren’t 10 football players in the country who are better than you. It’s time to declare.”
Revis declared. He still fancies himself an awfully good basketball player. “I can play, man,” he said, laughing, yesterday at the Jets practice facility in Florham Park, after the team completed its last full-blown practice in advance of tomorrow’s first-round playoff game in Cincinnati against the Bengals.
There are a number of recognizable names who wish Zmijanac would have minded his own business, let Revis follow his basketball heart and fill his basketball jones. Andre Johnson. Randy Moss. Steve Smith. Terrell Owens. All of them qualify as notches on Revis’ belt this year, with Chad Ochocinco the next target and the next challenge that awaits tomorrow afternoon.
For Revis’ current coach, the season he’s put together borders on otherworldly. For at least the fourth time in the past month, Rex Ryan crafted a brief campaign speech touting Revis as the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year, saying, “I’ve never seen a corner have this kind of year, with one exception — maybe Deion [Sanders] when he was with San Francisco.
“I hope he wins the defensive MVP because he’s as deserving of a guy as I’ve ever been around, and I’ve been around some great ones. Before I got here I only thought he was the best in the league. That’s what I thought. But he’s even better than that.”
For his old coach, it is merely the extension of a pathway he saw Revis create for himself back in Aliquippa, a hardscrabble football-mad city 30 miles straight up the Ohio River from Pittsburgh that produced Mike Ditka and Ty Law among many, many others and now, according to Zmijanac, “is a place where every Pop Warner kid is growing up wanting to be the next Darrelle Revis.”
It is also a place that requires a certain brand of personality in order to be successful, one that demands equal parts dreamer, competitor and fighter. Revis himself admits that when you grow up in Aliquippa, and you spend so many sleepless nights dreaming of playing varsity football, it isn’t all that hard to visualize doing just about anything you want.
“Everybody wants to play for the team,” he said. “And when you work so hard and you get a spot on the team and then you succeed, too . . . well, every other challenge you face after that, you know you at least have a shot if you want it badly enough.”
Time was, that was a spot on Mike Zmijanac’s roster. Tomorrow, it will mean bottling up Ochocinco. Beyond that? It boggles the imagination.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com
ncG1vNJzZmimqaW8tMCNnKamZ2JlfnF7j2pmaXBfp7K3tdJmmGappZ69brvFn2StoJVivK2wjJujqJubZA%3D%3D