Various New York Giants have spoken out about wanting Plaxico Burress back next season. Brandon Jacobs, the biggest of the Giants free agents this off-season, is going so far as to tie his Giants' future to No. 17s.
"If we have Plax on our team, we go 15-1 and we win the Super Bowl. I'm not afraid to say that and I'll say it to anybody on any team," Jacobs said. "We had a different identity with him and we didn't have enough time to change our identity to be effective at what we wanted to do - try to play a team differently. Teams - I'm not going to say stopped the run - but they did a little better each week because they had that eighth guy in the box."
Jacobs suggested it was much too late in the season to adjust to life without Burress on the field. When asked if the Giants need to make a move next season to replace Burress if he's not back, Jacobs replied, "I'm not going to say I think we should (because) then we would have our identity at the beginning of the season and not have to find a new identity late in the season. That's kind of hard. If we know he's not there, we set our identity to what we're going to be all season long instead of trying to change it."
Speaking of changing identities, Jacobs said that's what Burress has already done. And he's not the only one to have said that recently.
"Different guy," Jacobs said. "He knows what happened to him. And he knows, No. 1, he's lucky to be living today because of how close he came. He realizes that and he realizes the golden opportunity he has in front of him to be able to take care of his wife and his kid. I talk to Plax every other day. We text back and forth. He's still Plax, he's still the same person, but you can see he's got a different swagger about himself. I think he's changed and you won't ever hear anything from Plaxico as far as any kind of trouble or trouble with the team. It's all done. He's finished and he's ready to be a different person."
This is an obvious question, then, but would he want Burress back?
"If I'm here," Jacobs said, "I need 17 back on that roster."
I don't like players trying to be the general manager, or trying to back the general manager into a corner in terms of how to construct a team. That appears to be what Jacobs is doing here.
Still, if he is right and Giants management agrees with him that Burress is indeed different that might change how this whole scenario plays out.
I still believe the chance of Burress returning to the Giants is slim. But, I also believe this is only starting to get interesting.