School’s in session with Revis, young DBs

Darrelle Revis deserves a place in the game’s most hallowed hall one day. He has been a transcendent force that made loud-mouth receivers disappear on fall Sundays by taking them to a fictional place that seemed all too real for those blabbering fools. Time has slowed him down. He no longer has his own island, but that’s okay. He is open to change to survive in the cruelest of professions that caters to nobody, not even the greatest cornerback of this generation. He is different, but still valuable. Is he overpaid? Yes. No 31-year-old cornerback should be making $17 million.

If the Jets could turn back the clock, however, they would still give Revis the blockbuster contract that brought him back last year, because he should have never left.

Revis’ five-year, $70 million deal (with $39 million in real guarantees) is excessive in hindsight, but he is a stabilizing presence for a team in a “competitive rebuild” that is mindful of today with a focus on tomorrow.

You can see Revis’ value in quiet moments on the practice field when he offers wisdom to younger defensive backs, who listen in awe to the five-time first-team All-Pro. He is a living encyclopedia at their fingertips. He wants to help.

“He’s seen everything that there is to see,” rookie cornerback Juston Burris told the Daily News in the run-up to the third preseason game against the Giants on Saturday. “I’m trying to be a physical corner like he is and trying to play technique sound like he does. I need to mirror how he goes about things. So just seeing it from his perspective and seeing how he does things is going to be a boost to my game.

“He’ll pull me to the side and we’ll just talk football,” Burris continued. “I’ll ask him questions like, ‘How should I have played this? Should I have played off in this situation?’ It’s just simple things like that that I haven’t been through in the NFL yet, little things that he’s been through and that he knows that he can help me out with.”

Revis’ teaching moments come in subtle ways. He’ll never raise his voice. He’ll never disparage a young player after a mistake. He is an encouraging presence, who has embraced the role of mentor in the twilight of a career that will find a final resting place in Canton.

“He’s not going to stand up in meetings and make some huge announcement like, ‘Hey guys, listen to me,’” assistant defensive backs coach Daylon McCutcheon told The News. “That’s just not his personality . ... It’s subtle, but it carries a lot of weight because of who he is. It doesn’t jump out because he doesn’t announce it. But it happens. I see it happen. And I know it helps us out.

“When he does something or says something, it’s all eyes on him,” McCutcheon added. “When we’re watching 1-on-1s (from practice), when his rep is up, everyone is watching. Guys are locked in. They want to see and try to pick up the little things that he does. There’s things that he does naturally that other guys have to work on … and struggle to do. And he does it on a consistent basis.”

Consistency has been the soundtrack of his 10-year career. Come to work. Do your job. Help whenever you can. Rinse. Repeat. “We just want to follow in his footsteps,” safety Calvin Pryor said. “He still has it in him. We know that.”

Revis is always learning himself, playing a thinking man’s game with leverage and angles. He’s probably the most competitive player in franchise history.

“He’s the brain of our group,” Buster Skrine said. “We can always just look over and ask, ‘Hey what would you have done on this play?’ He’s like another coach in our room.”

He practices what he preaches. If he’s in for four plays, he’ll work his ass off on those four plays to set the right example.

“You could sit there and say, ‘Well, you should do this or you should do that,’” McCutcheon said. “If you’re not out there busting your own butt in practice that same way, it doesn’t carry that same weight. He practices hard, so he carries that respect.”

Revis is prideful like all the greats are. He bristles at the suggestion that he’s slow. The day he believes that is the day that he’ll know that it’s time to walk away from the game. He’s slower, which is a big difference.

He’ll tell you that he can still make an important contribution at cornerback at a time when critics point out his diminishing skills. He’s amenable to moving to safety one day, but that day is not today.

So, he plays with a controlled fire to prove that he still belongs in the conversation as one of the league’s best at his position. He won’t ever quit because quitting sends the wrong message to every young player who admires what he’s built over the past decade.

“There’s some chip,” McCutcheon said. “Maybe it’s his passion to be great. He goes out there and he has high expectations for himself. He’s set a bar for himself. When he goes out there, he’s wants to go find No. 15 (Brandon Marshall). Every corner doesn’t go out there and look for the best receiver. Especially in practice. We don’t make him follow No. 15. But when he gets out there, he wants to line up and he wants to work against the best guy we have on our team. That pushes him.”

Darrelle Revis still matters.