Three Panthers selected in NFL Draft

Minutes before he was drafted, Darrelle Revis disappeared into a back room of his… Minutes before he was drafted, Darrelle Revis disappeared into a back room of his grandmother’s Aliquippa, Pa., home. Revis sat, nervous, while his uncle, former Pitt and NFL star Sean Gilbert, a man who’d been in his position 15 years earlier, fed him advice about how to handle the biggest moment of his life.

“We were trying to plan it, just keep it quiet,” Revis said. “It didn’t happen like that.”

Moments later, Revis reappeared and weaved through a wave of relatives and friends before plopping down between his mother and grandmother on their leather couch in front of a big-screen television. Soon after, Revis, 21, began to cry.

“It finally hit me,” Revis said. “That’s why I got so emotional.”

It hit everybody else packed into the modest living room speckled with balloons both blue and gold – Pitt colors – and red and black – Aliquippa High School colors – when NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced that the New York Jets selected Revis with the 14th overall pick, prompting an eruption that cut Goodell well short of finishing Revis’ name.

“All my hard work that I’ve been through, some of my hard work that I did was in this house, back on the back hill,” Revis said later, after spending nearly an hour on the phone with New York media after his selection. “All I’ve been through my whole life I’ve just tried to handle it in a positive way.”

Revis is the 22nd Pitt football player to be drafted and the fourth from Aliquippa. He is also the first Panther first-round pick since Arizona took Larry Fitzgerald third overall in 2004.

“This is the biggest moment [of my life],” Revis said. “Watching my uncle get drafted, Ty Law