Distractions - Talent

The Burress affair was handled as well as possible by the Giants. Allowing the Burress affair to linger would no doubt have led to lots of locker room chatter and posturing, debate about what to do, speculation about what the league or the team would do and in fact could have hurt preparation for the upcoming game. Instead, they cut out the cancer quickly, decisively and without rancor. This had the affect of keeping any possible distraction to an absolute minimum. I don't think the problem with the Giants is any distraction caused by Burress legal issues or lack of focus from the team. The problem is that the Giants are not as good a team without Burress. Plax is a great player who can make catches under any circumstances, in any kind of weather, against man-to-man defense, against zone defenses, he sheds CB's that try to play him physically and chuck him at the line of scrimmage, he catches the ball in traffic, he can take short passes, break a tackle and make a big gain out of it. He's a great player. Losing a great player makes the team weaker; it's the talent loss, not the distraction.

I was a little bored last night and took out the DVD of the Giants 2007 season and Superbowl run. I had forgotten how many great plays Burress made for the team last year, how many great catches he made and how great a year he had despite his ankle injury. Just to refresh your memory and bring up a few highlights: in the 3rd game of the year, Giants at 0-2 and the season on the line, were down 17-3 at halftime. Burress had a monster second half, caught a few balls to set up two TDs and scored one himself on a 33 yard play. He also made huge plays against the Jets, against the Eagles and practically won the Conference Championship game single handedly against the Packers.

But it's more than just how many big plays he made, it's the type of plays he made. Of course he was a threat to catch a deep ball, but was also a threat to catch a short hitch, make a DB miss and turn it into a big play. That made it very risky to blitz the Giants, especially once Eli got his bearings and was able to read defenses better. He was a big threat at the goal line because of his size and he was able to make adjustments on the ball because of his size and catch balls even though he was not wide open. Remember the catch he made on the first drive of game 17 against the Patriots last year. He wasn't wide open, the safety was right behind him; but he went up and took the ball away from him. He was an enormous threat and disrupted defensive game plans.

We may have forgotten or minimized how good he is now, because the Giants have been winning this year without enormous contribution from him. The running game has been strong and Eli has stepped up and is spreading the ball around, so it seems like the only thing the Giants have to worry about is the distraction factor. But it's not so - he will be missed greatly, especially in the playoffs when Giants play the better teams with the rugged defenses and offensive yards are harder to come by.

Giants OC Gilbride and HC Coughlin have to be creative to compensate for the loss of Burress and for the different ways teams are sure to defend the Giants from here on out. Actually, I am not sure that the Cowboys will be so much different than they usually are, because Wade Phillips is an unimaginative coach and while the Cowboys are creative and dangerous offensively, on the defensive side of the ball they are fairly predictable. They play 3-4, they do like to blitz on passing downs, but are fairly predictable in the db-field when they show zone or man. Nevertheless, Gilbride has to replace the deep play threat that Burress gave the team.