Plaxico Burress decided to return to the city where he experienced his greatest success. Of course, it’s also the city where he almost blew his dick off at a nightclub, then spent two years in the clink as penance for his abject stupidity. As the New York Jets discovered, three million dollars goes a long way toward erasing bad memories.
With one stroke of the pen, Plax went from the chain gang to Gang Green. You gotta hand it to Rex Ryan. He assembled one of the NFL’s finest collections of thugs and criminals over in Baltimore and is now doing his damnedest to remake his Jets in their image. Burress will team with another Steeler cast-off, Santonio Holmes, in trying to make Mark Sanchez look like a legitimate championship caliber quarterback.
To be clear, I don’t hold blame Burress for this decision. At thirty-three years old and without any steady income outside of the going rate for making license plates, he should look for the biggest pay day. The Pittsburgh Steelers simply didn’t have the cap space to sign him for anything more than the veteran minimum. It would’ve been nice to see him back in Black and Gold but it was a long shot from the start.
Some people have wondered why the Steelers were interested in Plax at all when they already have a promising collection of young receivers. Hines Ward had his least productive year since becoming a starter so who knows how much gas is left in that tank. Emmanuel Sanders, who showed flashes of brilliance during his rookie season, had BOTH feet operated on during the off-season. Who knows where he’s at physically. This leaves Mike Wallace and Antonio Brown as the only known quantities. “Known” being a relative term considering A-B caught a total of 16 balls last year.
With Antwaan Randle-El‘s release, Arnaz Battle would be the lone holdover from last year’s receiving corps to see actual game time. This group of receivers has plenty of room for another dependable veteran target. Unless you want to bet on Limas Sweed finally getting his act together. And that’s a bet I don’t think even the most degenerate of gamblers would take.