Plaxico Burress has signed a 1-year contract with the New York Jets, hours after he visited the Steelers and hours after it was reported that he wouldn’t meet with the Jets on Sunday.
The Steelers clearly wanted Burress to come back, especially Bruce Arians and Ben Roethlisberger, who began reaching out to Burress a few months ago. But, in the end, it’s likely that the teams were far apart on the money end as his deal with New York is worth $3.017 million, too much for the Steelers to pay.
I would have been very excited for Burress to join the Steelers at a reasonable price. He fits the bill of a big, physical receiver that the Steelers do not have on their roster. I also think that he’s mostly a good guy and that it’s been unfair to see him lumped in with real troublemakers like Pacman Jones and Donte Stallworth.
I would expect Burress to have a nice season this year, though he probably would have put up better numbers playing in Pittsburgh than he will in New York.
As for the Steelers, they still will have one of the better receiving corps in the league and adding Burress wouldn’t have made them THAT much better.
