The night in November of that year when he decided to leave his home in New Jersey to go to a nightclub in Manhattan - accidentally shooting himself in the leg and eventually landing in jail - derailed his career at its apex. Nine months earlier, he had caught the touchdown pass that won Super Bowl XLII for the Giants over the Patriots . He then signed a five-year, $35 million contract extension. He had a son.
Bloomberg said it would have been a mockery of the law not to punish Burress to the fullest extent. Burress served 20 months in prison. He has changed, it would have been impossible not to. He has written about how little he understood or valued the things he had at the time, about how much he lost - not just in money but in time.
“A lot of the things that are going on are just senseless,’’ he said yesterday. “To have 48 shootings in one weekend - during a 48-hour time span - it’s crazy. I was just trying to bring some knowledge to it and how things like that continue to tear our communities down.
“Lives are lost over things that really aren’t important. I wanted to get people to understand the value of life and self-worth.’’
Burress is a football player again. Released from Rikers Island in July, he remains in New York, no longer a Giant but a Jet. He’s returned to a world where winning is the fastest road to personal redemption, and the two touchdown passes he’s caught this season have made the process easier.
The Jets signed him for $3.017 million, far from a superstar’s pay. He is adjusting to no longer being the primary target, instead one of the many options at quarterback Mark Sanchez’s disposal. But thinking back to when he was in prison, football was the furthest thing from his mind.
“At the time, football wasn’t important,’’ he said.
When Burress faced a Manhattan grand jury in July 2009, he said he wanted to show that he was remorseful, and as someone who shot himself in the leg with the gun that he brought to a nightclub to protect himself, obviously fallible.
