Plaxico Burress is a great player, a great wide receiver, a great pass-catcher. No doubt about it. But the way he’s handled himself the past few weeks has left a lot of people (rightly) wondering what kind of teammate he is.

I’m not going to sit here and say I know what kind of “emergency” Burress was dealing with the day he didn’t show up at Giants practice and didn’t call anyone to say he wasn’t coming. Burress doesn’t want to give details about the situation and that’s his right. He says he had a responsibility to his family that day and put them first. Fine.

But Burress also has a responsibility to his team, and his teammates, and in his first comments since rejoining the Giants following a two-week suspension for insubordination, Burress was hardly repentant. He basically said he’d do the same thing again if the situation arose, and essentially said he listens to what Tom Coughlin says to him but is often not on the same page. He conceded that he has trouble handling team rules (like, say, being places on time) but said that when it comes time to play, he’s ready.

Now, I’m not a particularly devout Giants fan so I can’t speak to whether this attitude offends my sensibilities in that regard, but it does bother me as—- well, as a human being. It just seems unnecessarily confrontational and foolish. You talk about having a responsibility to be a good father/family man but you can’t make it to a meeting on time? Or respect a team leader? How is that responsible?

The Giants did the right thing suspending Burress. It was absolutely the correct decision. But you get the feeling these problems with Burress will always be an issue, and I guess that’s a tradeoff you make when you accept his talent. I’m just not sure it’s a trade I’d be willing to make if I were the one running the team.

Would you?

CARP SAYS:

Plaxico Burress = Manny Ramirez. Only Manny’s going to the Hall of Fame.

It came out during Burress’s suspension that he has been fined dozens of times, maybe 30 or 40, for various  team infractions in the short time he’s been here. So it’s actually surprising that an old disciplinarian like Tom Coughlin hasn’t suspended him before. And it’s shocking that the Giants, knowing this, let him talk his way into a renegotiation of his current contract. I’m always against renegotiation of contracts, anyway, but you definitely don’t give a problematic guy $11 million up front. Geez, that just fills up his “fine jar” and gives him more ammo, and more incentive, to be a bad teammate and a rule-breaker.

Does it bug you that you have to pay PSLs and this guy is walking around spitting out thousands of your dollars in fines?