Giants co-owner John Mara joined PFT Live on Thursday, primarily to do a postmortem on the gone-but-not-yet-forgotten labor dispute.
After that, it was time to talk about the Giants. And one of the biggest questions facing the Giants right now is whether they’ll bring back Tiki Barber Plaxico Burress.
So I asked Mara how Burress and coach Tom Coughlin could get along, in light of everything that happened in 2008 and previously.
“That was 2008, and it’s now 2011,” Mara said. “He is coming tomorrow evening and he and Tom are going to sit down, and that’s step one of the process. And if we move successfully past step one of the process, then we have to see if he fits in terms of our salary cap situation and everything.”
A formal signing is by now means close.
“We’re a long way from being there, and we’ll just have to see what happens,” Mara said. “But obviously he was a tremendous player for us and one of the big reasons that we won that Super Bowl. I think it would have been foolish for us not to even have the conversation with him.
“So we’ll see what happens when he comes in tomorrow evening and what happens that. But obviously you have to be interested in someone who has that kind of talent.”
We agree. And we’re surprised more teams aren’t chasing him. The mere fact that the Giants are willing to explore whether he has changed enough in three years to justify bringing him back confirms that they have high regard for his talents.
For any team out there that’s on the fence, that should be enough to nudge them toward trying to get in on this one.