PHOENIX — The more the population shrinks in and around Aliquippa, the more NFL players that city seems to produce. Darrelle Revis might not be the latest, but he might be the greatest, and he finally arrived at the Super Bowl, where he can add yet more to the legend of the Quips.
Revis as the greatest would include Pro Football Hall of Fame tight end Mike Ditka. At 29, Revis might be playing in his first Super Bowl in his first — and maybe only — season at cornerback for the New England Patriots, but he already has made six Pro Bowls and been a first-team All-Pro four times. All that has come in eight NFL seasons, one of which was limited to two games because of a torn ACL in 2012.
He could follow Ditka as the only former Quips who played for Pitt and made the Hall of Fame. That could have included Tony Dorsett had he not gone to next-door Hopewell High School.
“Tony Dorsett lived across the street,” said Aliquippa football coach Mike Zmijanac. “The only reason he went to Hopewell was all the racial problems [at Aliquippa at the time]. Four, five years before or after, he would have played in Aliquippa.”
But the list of those who did and made it into the NFL is an impressive one — Ditka, Revis, Ty Law, Sean Gilbert, Frank Ribar, Tommie Campbell and Jonathan Baldwin.
Ditka, Law, Baldwin, Revis and his uncle Gilbert were all first-round draft choices. If you want to go beyond football, you can count Press Maravich, Henry Mancini and former U.S. surgeon general Jesse Steinfeld with Aliquippa High School degrees.
Law earned three Super Bowl rings with the Patriots; Ditka earned one coaching the 1985 Chicago Bears (to go with his NFL championship playing for the 1963 Bears). Revis gets his chance to make it One For The Aliquippa Thumb.
“This is where I always wanted to be,” Revis said during a Super Bowl media session. “It took eight years. In New York, it was two back-to-back AFC championship games that we failed to win, and that was it. After that, I tore my ACL.”
And after that, the Jets traded him to Tampa Bay, where he played in 2013. The Buccaneers released him after one season because they did not want to pay him the $16 million salary called for in his 2014 contract.
New England quickly signed him to a two-year, $32 million contract but will have to get him to agree to renegotiate his 2015 compensation or the Patriots could release him, too. He is due a $12.5 million roster bonus plus another $7.5 million in salary this year.
In light of that, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson said recently he would “love for Darrelle to come back” this year. The Patriots promptly filed a tampering charge against the Jets.
Would the Steelers be interested? Probably not at the price Revis will command if the Patriots are forced to cut him. The Steelers just missed out on Revis’ first go-around when the Jets drafted him with the 14th pick of the 2007 draft and the Steelers then took Lawrence Timmons at No. 15.
“We were all hoping the Steelers would take him,” Zmijanac said.
“All” might have been the 10,000 or so people who lived in Aliquippa at the time. The city’s population dipped under 10,000 in the most recent census (2010) for the first time since the 1920s.
“When I was a kid, it was over 30,000 people in Aliquippa,” Zmijanac said. “When we had the racial issues in the late ’60s, early ’70s [many left]. When the mills went down in early’80s, the town got smaller, people moved to places for betterment of their families.”
Apparently, not all those who played football.
“Our kids, those are all homegrown kids,” Zmijanac said proudly. “They’re children, grandchildren, nephews of guys who played before. It was not just like they moved in here like Gronkowski did.”
Tight end Rob Gronkowski, Revis’ teammate with the Patriots, moved from Western New York to Pittsburgh so he could play football his senior season at Woodland Hills High School.
Revis has deep athletic roots in Aliquippa.
“His father, Darryl, played football and corner for us on two WPIAL championship teams,” Zmijanac noted.
His dad and uncle played football at IUP. His mother was a high school track star. Her brother, Revis’ uncle, is Shawn Gilbert.
“Those are pretty good bloodlines,” Zmijanac said. “All the families of all the [NFL] guys you talked about, they all still live in the Aliquippa area.”
Sunday, Revis will be the latest to carry the torch into the Super Bowl for the old mill town that Zmijanac proudly proclaims is “still a city.”
“It’s tough to get to this point, it really is,” said the cornerback they call Revis Island because of his ability to blanket receivers without any help. “And, when you’ve failed in the past, you just know you were that close, but it’s so far away. … It would be mind-blowing to win it.”
Ed Bouchette: ebouchette@post-gazette.com and Twitter @EdBouchette.
First Published: January 30, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
