In his new book, Giant:  The Road To The Super Bowl, receiver Plaxico Burress attemptS to comply with the publishing industry’s stone-tablet “Thou Shalt Create Controversy” mandate by creating the impression that the Giants wrongfully concealed the knee injury that Burress suffered in a hotel shower several days before catching the championship-winning touchdown pass against the the Patriots.

In doing so, Burress overstates the extent to which the Giants covered up the condition of his knee.

The issue comes up right out of the gates, in Chapter 1 of the book, with Burress strongly suggesting that the team failed to comply with the letter and the spirit of NFL rules regarding his MCL sprain.

“We have to keep the New England Patriots from finding out,” Burress vows at page 2 of the book. 

To be sure, the Giants didn’t link Plaxico’ failure to practice on the Wednesday before the Super Bowl to the knee injury that he suffered the day before.  Instead, his absence from practice on Wednesday was attributed to an ankle injury that plagued him for most of the season.

By Thursday, the Giants came clean, listing both “ankle” and “knee” as the reasons for his omission from practice.

Plaxico’s book, however, suggests skullduggery on Thursday, saying at page 6, “[T]hey don’t even put me on the injury report at all that day.” 

The contention is simply wrong.

Burress also hints that the Giants’ failure to disclose chapter-and-verse details about the circumstances giving rise to the injury and the specific portion of his knee that had become effed up violated the rules. 

Again, he’s wrong.

That said, coach Tom Coughlin was hardly forthcoming about the fact that the injury happened somewhere other than the football field, and at some time other than during practice or a game.   “He has an ankle that always has been a problem, but he also has some issues with a knee that off and on in the past has bothered him,’’ Coughlin said on the Thursday before the game. 

The reality, then, is that Burress essentially was attempting to blow the whistle on the team for breaking the rules regarding the disclosure of injuries — and that he was so intent on doing so that he overshot the mark.  The lone arguable problem with the team’s approach was the failure to mention his knee on the Wednesday report.  Though Coughlin was stretching the truth at best in his comments to the media on Thursday, the only requirement was to identify whether Burress practiced on Thursday, and if not why not.

Ultimately, Burress was listed on Friday as questionable due to the ankle and knee injuries, and the book makes it abudantly clear that his availability was indeed a flip of the coin proposition, at best.  In the end, Burress played — and played well.  Though the Patriots didn’t know whether it was a sprained MCL or a bone bruise or fully torn ACL, the rules don’t require such candor.

Whether the rules should expect more is a different issue.  For now, however, Plaxico’s backhanded attempt to out the Giants as cheaters is factually wrong, and his effort to do so seems to fly in the face of the concept of “team”.