Plaxico Burress isn’t the explosive weapon he used to be as a Giant. He hasn’t been a red-zone menace. He hasn’t been getting open enough. He has three drops over the past two games. He doesn’t have anywhere near the chemistry with Mark Sanchez that he had with Eli Manning.
From afar, Burress appears to be a prisoner of his own rust, of Father Time, of his advancing football mortality.
He has 14 catches and two touchdowns. After six games a year ago, Braylon Edwards had 21 catches with four touchdowns and one DUI.
Burress, wearing a What-Me-Worry? smile, fires back now with this message, paraphrased here for critics and concerned Jets fans alike: I am not shot.
I asked him: “Do you still think you can dominate on any given Sunday?”
Burress said: “When I lose that mindset, I’ll walk away from the game.”
Then I asked him: “Do you have any doubt in your mind that you will once again be a feared wide receiver?
Burress said: “No doubt about it.”
Why?
Burress said: “ ’Cause I know me.”
What would he tell people who wonder if he is washed-up?
Burress said: “That has never stopped me from having success in this league, what anybody has said.”
Does it motivate him?
Burress said: “Not at all. Look at all I’ve been through (chuckle).”
Finally, I asked him what he would tell Jets fans, already down on their team and pessimistic about beating the Chargers on Sunday, about himself.
Burress said: “We will be just fine. And it’s going to be sweet.”
To this point, it has been more sour than sweet for him and Sanchez.
“We’re not on the right page right now. … We just got to work to get on the right page,” Burress said.
At the end of the Giants’ Super Bowl XLII season, Burress and Manning could have written a book together on the right page.
“When you’re seeing the same coverage as your quarterback … you give him the hand signals and you’re just going out there pitching and catching. That’s when you know you’re developing a bond,” Burress said. “Those things take time. All the quarterbacks that I’ve played with over time, it didn’t happen in the first six games. Anywhere that I’ve been, it didn’t happen on the first six games nowhere. When it comes, it’s going to be the right time.”
“That kind of stuff doesn’t happen overnight,” Sanchez said. “Pretty soon we’ll be on the same page.”
Coach Rex Ryan offers up an excuse for Burress.
“There’s a lot of times when he’s getting doubled,” Ryan said.
But if he was getting doubled so much, there would be no excuse for the Ground & Pound not to reappear. Is Burress being doubled the way he was against the Jaguars, when he was shutout?
“Not as much,” Burress said. “Those are some of the things we gotta take advantage of. I gotta get to the place to where I need to be to get open to make those plays so we can start getting that coverage rolled or whatever and get our running game going.
“It all starts with me. I’ve always been that kind o guy. And I’m going to work tirelessly to get back to how I know I can play this game.”
His first priority: Catch the damn ball.
“Sometimes you’re so confident doing what you do, you get a little lazy as far as looking the ball in and then focusing on it all the way to your hands and tucking it,” Burress said. “I kind of see myself just seeing the ball and just … ready to go. Ready to go and make a play. I got to get back to the foundation of just really watching the ball hit my hands and then running. Maybe I got to slow it down a little bit. It’s not moving as fast as I think it is. … It’s just wanting to catch the ball and go and do something exciting and get back to that feel and having fun.”
There’s a catch to not playing football in nearly three years, to spending 20 months behind bars.
“When the season first started during the games, I was coming out of the huddle, going the wrong way,” Burress said with a smile.
Ryan is happy to have him as a $3 Million Man, nevertheless.
“You know in this town one week you’re a hero and the next week you’re a goat so,” Burress said with a chuckle. “This offense is just going to go through the roof, and it’s only a matter of time,” Burress said.
Time for some bang for the bucks.
steve.serby@nypost.com