After a huge 21-14 victory for the New York – football – Giants, Plaxico Burress trots off the field happy. When talking to reporters he expresses that he is thrilled with his team’s big win, as well as his reunion with the team that drafted him 8th overall in the 2000 draft. The one thing that he did not do was apologize.Tom Coughlin decided to bench Plax for the beginning of the Giants game on Sunday due to treatments the Burress skipped earlier in the week. The short version is that he was supposed to show up for treatments regarding his injured neck on Saturday morning. He never showed up, saying that his neck was fine and he didn’t see the treatments as necessary. New York’s Wide Receiver didn’t make a huge contribution while he was playing; only recording 15 yards in three receptions.
This seems to be an issue that the Giants, simply, cannot resolve. Their best offensive player is also their biggest heartache heading into Week 9. Burress has a total of 356 yards this year (59/game), 3 touchdowns, on 28 receptions. The part that New York is upset with is that he has zero remorse for the conflicts, and he continues to violate team and NFL rules. He just doesn’t care.
He has a track record of screwing up this year. He was suspended for 2 weeks earlier in the season for breaking even more rules and was fined a total of $45,000 by the NFL (criticized refs). Looking at the bigger picture, Plaxico Burress has been punished 5 different times in the past 4 weeks by either his team, or the NFL. Now, the Giants can live with the league hammering Burress for his comments about the refs. What they can't deal with is a star player who continually acts as if he can do anything he wants as long as he produces on the field.
With Plax continuing to think that he is above the law, his relationship with Tom Coughlin worsens and worsens. Burress says after the game that his job is to catch passes and that everybody will not always see eye-to-eye. He would later also state that it was a “simple miscommunication.”
It is obvious that Coach Coughlin and Plax do not get along. When asked about the situation after the game, Tom acted like the questions were not valid. On Sunday, after the game, Plaxico said that, “Coughlin doesn’t know me. I typically work with the WR’s Coach and the Offensive Coordinator and not Coach Coughlin. He doesn’t know how I do things,” and when asked about their relationship, Burress just says, “I would say it’s a working relationship.”
Though it's very easy to misread people when they talk around questions, that isn't the case in this situation. Burress has never been high on Coughlin's rules -- and there have been published reports that Burress has violated more of those than we'll ever know -- and this seems very much like a clash of wills. In fact, Burress has been making headlines off the field for months now, going all the way back to the offseason when he was lobbying for a new contract that he eventually received. My view on it? I think that Plaxico knows he can now do whatever he feels on doing because the Giants are stuck with him for another 5 years.
The thing that New York really needs to worry about is keeping this team together. Teammates such as Amani Toomer and Shaun O’Hara have publically said that they are sick of the whole Burress-situation. Sick of talking about him over the team’s success. A huge factor to last year’s Championship run was the team’s chemistry and it is obvious that the chemistry might be in jeopardy. Not only do they lose chemistry but if Plax is sitting on the sidelines, they lose a ton of big-play capability and young bucks (like Smith and Moss) are forced to step up and pick up slack. I would say that they are without-a-doubt the best team in the NFC but this whole thing leads to an enormous downfall. The question I ask you is... Can the Giants repeat as Super Bowl Champs while dealing with this mess?
Please tell me what you think in the comment section below.
Justin Hulsey
StLDieHard24@gmail.com
http://www.thejaystick.blogspot.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment