There comes a time in evey pro athlete's career when he just doesn't want to do the work that is necessary to get his body into the kind of condition it needs to be in order to play the game and be the best he or she can be. When I read this rumor I had to believe that once he got the ring that moment came for Revis.
By all reports he was a great teammate when he was here. He did all the work that the team demanded from him (which we all know is a lot). He was certainly the best CB, I'd ever seen at TC wearing a Pats uniform. But it seems now, that beyond the fact he wanted to get back to NY to end his career, where he would clearly get the most money. It is becoming clear that he no longer was willing to put himself through what was necessary to, if not stay at the same elite level, at least to keep the ravages of time to a minimum. And his play over the last 2 years has shown it. It was another reason he was never serious about coming back here, since he knew he didn't want to put in that kind of work they make you do here again.
Normally I'd ignore a rumor article like this one, but the deterioration of Revis' play has less to do with what's happening to him physically, and says a lot more about his mental discipline to put in the hard work. Older players need to do more work to get ready, let alone what they used to be able to do when they are youner.
This only goes to show us how rare a guy Tom Brady truly is because as hard a worker he has been over the years, he's a guy who is willing to go even further than that in order to keep playing at a high level at 39.....and into the future. The miracle of Brady is that he still loves it. Not only the games, but the practices, the film work, and what he has to do to get ready for a season he STILL loves it all.
The day that kind of mental toughness ceases to be there, THAT will be the day we will actually start to see that "serious decline in Brady's play" that people have been predicting for the last half decade. But it is also my belief that the day Brady ceases to love the entire process of playing the game, he will walk away.