Why is Plaxico Burress Suspended but Marvin Harrison Still Playing for Colts?

As Jerry Seinfeld might say, “What’s the deal…with NFL wide receivers?”

Chad Johnson, Brandon Marshall, and Chris Henry, to name a few, have all been lightning rods for controversy this season for various locker room and off-field misdeeds.

But none of the afore mentioned wide receivers’ problems compare to those faced by two of the most prolific receivers of this decade: Plaxico Burress and Marvin Harrison.

By now, everyone knows about Plaxico Burress and his unfortunate shooting incident. The quick Cliff’s Notes version if you need a refresher:

Yesterday, Burress turned himself in to authorities after shooting himself in the leg while illegally carrying a loaded handgun. Two teammates (Antonio Pierce and Ahmad Bradshaw) were with him and allegedly helped Plaxico make it to a hospital, where a worker has been suspended for no reporting the gunshot wound. Today, the New York Giants announced that Plaxico Burress was being placed on the non-football injury list and would not be a part of the team for the remainder of the season.

There is more to the story than that, but you probably know it all already. (And if not, hop over to ProFootballTalk.com to learn all the details.)

The Giants decision to suspend Burress does not seem unreasonable at all to me. Plaxico was already suspended once this year for insubordination, and seems to become more of a headache with each passing year and with each contract extension he signs. This latest incident is just another in a long litany of incidents in which Plaxico’s conduct off the field has overshadowed his prodigious production on it.

What really hurt Plaxico Burress in this case is that the Giants have proven that they can overcome the loss of Tiki Barber…and Michael Strahan…and Osi Umenyiora…and Jeremy Shockey…and now Plaxico Burress. They have built a great team concept and probably did not even have to think twice about giving Plaxico the Keyshawn treatment and just telling him to go away.

But what I can’t stop wondering, and what I haven’t seen covered anywhere else, is why the Plaxico Burress story is such a huge deal while the Marvin Harrison shooting investigation in Philadelphia is barely a blip on the radar screen anymore.

I posted about the Marvin Harrison shooting investigation back in October, right after word came out that Marvin would be facing a civil trial for his alleged involvement in a shooting that took place in his hometown of Philadelphia. Criminal charges were never filed against Harrison, although the case was still considered “an open investigation” by the Assistant District Attorney as of October 8th. The Philly.com article linked in the last sentence is the most recent article I can find online about the Marvin Harrison shooting. The victim Dwight Dixon, who is also the plaintiff in the civil suit, was apparently scheduled to appear in court on November 17th to answer charges that he filed an erroneous police report. I could not find any word on what happened with with respect to that hearing, or if it even occurred. (If there have been any recent developments in this case, please post links in the comments. Google certainly was not bringing any up, and I haven’t heard anything about this case since October.)

Basically, there was a big hubbub early in 2008 when the story first broke on Harrison, and it gained traction again in October with word of the civil suit, but now all is quiet; and Marvin Harrison continues to suit up for the Indianapolis Colts. Luckily for Harrison, he only seems to cause trouble when he is back home in Philly. The shooting investigation story was a shock because everyone assumed Harrison was a great guy just because he is quiet and reserved. His disposition, it seems, and history of not causing locker room trouble, gives the Colts no reason to suspend him without proof or a conviction in the shooting case.

Is that right? Perhaps. A very good argument could be made that the Giants will in fact be better off without Plaxico and the circus of distractions that has followed him this season. The Colts have no such trouble with Harrison — only the problems of his declining skills contributing to their offense becoming something far less potent than the well-oiled machined we have become accustomed to. (When you can’t score a touchdown against the Browns, you have problems.)

But while we are busy throwing stones at Plaxico Burress for being an idiot, a scofflaw, and a miscreant for his decision to illegally carry a loaded handgun, let’s take a moment to remember that the accusations against Marvin Harrison are actually far more severe.

Plaxico Burress illegally possessed a loaded handgun, and shot himself in the leg. Certainly, he put others at risk by carrying the gun an allowing it to go off; but in reality, no physical harm was done to anyone else because of his misdeed.

In the Harrison case, these are facts alleged in the civil suit filed by Dwight Dixon (as reported by Philly.com):

* A shooting took place on April 29th after a fist fight broke out between Marvin Harrison and Dwight Dixon at a North Philadelphia auto repair shop owned by Harrison.

* Harrison and Dixon squabbled for two weeks before the shooting after they exchanged words in Playmakers, a bar on 28th Street near Cambridge that Harrison owns.

* Ballistics tests proved shell casings found at the shooting scene had been fired from Harrison’s gun, a Belgian-made FN5.7, law-enforcement sources said.

* Detectives found the firearm in Harrison’s garage on Thompson Street.

* Witnesses and Dixon separately identified Harrison as the shooter, the sources said.

The two biggest differences between the Harrison and Burress situations are, of course:

1. The act allegedly carried out by Harrison injured another person, not himself, as in the Burress case.
2. Harrison was never formally charged criminally. To date, as far as I know, he has only been charged in the civil suit by Dixon.

With the information available online, I find it very hard to believe that Marvin Harrison was not the one who pulled the trigger. At a minimum, someone else pulled the trigger on a gun owned (legally, I am assuming) by Harrison and injured another party. I remind you again that while illegally carrying a handgun is an egregious offense and should be punished, no one else was hurt because of Plaxico Burress. Burress has seriously hurt himself, and his team — but has caused no physical injury to another party. Marvin Harrison has not, ostensibly, hurt his team — but he was either explicitly or implicitly involved in injuring another person, and committing or being party to an act that could have potentially killed that person.

I’m not saying the Colts should suspend Marvin Harrison. I believe in the tenet of American jurisprudence that you are innocent until proven guilty. But as Mike Florio over at ProFootballTalk likes to say, that only works in the courtroom. In the court of public opinion, the assumption is that reasonable inferences and judgments will be made from available facts. Without more evidence to the contrary, it is quite hard for me to argue Harrison’s case. Marvin Harrison is not a locker room distraction, nor has been charged criminally, so the Colts have not punished him in any way.

The worst part of this whole case for Plaxico Burress is that the trouble he faces with the law is, at the end of the day, probably not going to be the most costly misdeed he committed. If Plaxico Burress had been a model teammate and was someone who had the support of his coach and his teammates, there is no way he would have been placed on the non-injury football list and banished from the Giants. It had become pretty apparent that the Giants were fed up with Plaxico, and the shooting incident gave them an easy excuse to just make him go away.

So as the story of Plaxico Burress continues to evolve, and bloggers and talk radio hosts across the country admonish him for breaking the law and being a bad citizen, remember: there is a wide receiver in Indianapolis who may have actually done something far worse; something that actually caused physical harm to someone other than himself.

Marvin Harrison is still playing, while Plaxico Burress is not; and it has far more to do with their conduct in the locker room than any significant difference in the degree of trouble they have gotten themselves into outside of it.

The lesson for all you aspiring, troublemaking wide receivers? Stay quiet and don’t cause waves in the locker room. Ignore this advice, and you will be jettisoned in your most dire hour of need. Pay heed to this advice, and you can pretty much get away with (attempted) murder. Just ask Plaxico Burress and Marvin Harrison.

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