The moment 10 months ago was surreal, when you really think about it. Plaxico Burress had been through so much — a troubled past, conflicts with coaches, a painful ankle injury, and a knee injury from a shower mishap just days before Super Bowl XLII. Yet there he was, open in the end zone, with 35 seconds remaining.

In one moment it was as if his past transgressions were erased. His legacy was going to be that of the man who caught the game-winning touchdown pass in one of the most remarkable Super Bowl upsets of all time.
 
Instead, in one crazy moment inside a Manhattan nightclub, he threw his entire legacy away.
 
He will forever be remembered now for what happened at The Latin Quarter in Manhattan last Friday night, when somehow the gun Burress was carrying went off and shot him in the leg. Apparently it was accidental. Apparently the gun was unlicensed. He could be facing 3 ½ to 15 years in prison.
 
But the particulars are no longer important. The picture in everybody’s minds is. One week ago, everyone was forever going to remember Burress bowing in the end zone in Arizona, or standing with the Super Bowl trophy as confetti flew all around.
 
Now the enduring image is one of him doing a “perp walk” outside of the 17th precinct in Manhattan with his hands cuffed behind his back.
 
What a shame. That’s all anyone can really say. What a shame.
 
“When I spoke to our team Saturday morning, and when I spoke to the team (Wednesday) morning, there were two words I used,” Tom Coughlin said. “One was ‘disappointment,’ and the other was ‘sadness.’ I think that summed it up.”
 
The Giants are 11-1 and they will go on. They have proven to be a distraction-proof team. They may even make it to Super Bowl XLIII where they will likely be asked a million times about the Burress incident, all over again. They will rail at the media and rail at the world for having a rush to judgment. Of course, they will also likely continue to win.
 
They will do it, though, without Burress who has been shooting himself in the foot long before he ever shot himself in the leg. He plays for a group of men who have formed one of the ultimate “teams” ever assembled, yet he’s consistently acted like anything but a team player. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, two benchings and a suspension, all had him in the Giants’ dog house long before he was shot.
 
Now his 2008 season is over and he’s saddled with a four-game suspension and a spot on the season-ending non-football-injury list, and he could be facing an additional suspension or punishment from the league. Consider it all a sort of lifetime achievement award for a player who never really seemed to get that the parts of the Giants’ equation were never supposed to be bigger than the sum.
 
His Giants career is probably over. If and when he avoids prison, he’ll be radioactive to the rest of the league (though given his size, speed, talent and production, someone will take a chance on him).
 
But a man who was way up on top of the world, a sports hero who was being worshipped by a city, a region, and Giants fans all over the country, will never be up on top of that mountaintop again. He slammed himself into rock bottom — a place he’s probably been heading for years.
 
Burress may get up and get back to the business of football. But the world will never think of him the same way again. It didn’t have to be that way. It’s a pathetic, sad story.
 
But he did it to himself. That’s the saddest part of all.

Ralph Vacchiano is the author of Eli Manning: The Making of a Quarterback, which is available for purchase here.

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