New York Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie can't believe the Darrelle Revis rumors. Cromartie doesn't want to believe them.
"We can't lose a guy like him," Cromartie told NFL.com's Andy Fenelon at the Pro Bowl on Friday. "(Revis is) a great leader in the locker room and also in our DB room, making sure that guys are accountable for each other. To lose a guy like that would be huge. And even though he's coming off the surgery, I believe he'll come back as strong as ever."
Cromartie is in Hawaii this week in large part because Revis' injury allowed him to track No. 1 wide receivers all around the field. The team's secondary held up fairly well without Revis, which could be partly influencing owner Woody Johnson's desire to make a move.
Revis tweeted that he was speechless about the trade rumors, but that came before speaking with new general manager John Idzik. ProFootballTalk's Mike Florio spoke with Idzik on Friday.
"I reached out to Darrelle and I made sure he knew exactly where we were coming from and that this is my first day on the job,and our message to everyone was, 'Give us a chance to get to know each other and introduce ourselves to each other,'" Idzik said. "So give us that chance and give us the chance to go through our current roster, ultimately that's the basis of comparison to whatever you may contemplate doing. We haven't taken that first step and that's what I relayed to Darrelle."
That's a long way of saying a potential trade is far from off the table. It would be a complicated deal, but there should be no shortage of suitors for Revis.
Follow Gregg Rosenthal on Twitter @greggrosenthal.
