Most troubling is that we know Burress again found himself in the kind situation where only bad things happen and where cops want to ask you questions. If this were an isolated incident — say, like teammate Kareem MacKenzie's recent DUI arrest — perhaps it would be only a red flag.

But this isn't an aberration. It is a culmination, a climax to a busy season of discontent and disconnect for Burress, which included a protracted salary dispute, blowing off practice that resulted in a one-game suspension (a game, not coincidentally, the Giants won in a rout) and an even more disquieting nonchalance when he returned from the ban.

The Giants were willing to tolerate Placating Plax an awful long way, all the way through his game-winning catch at Super Bowl XLII and all the way to a $15 million contract extension. But Burress has kept pushing, kept tugging, kept kicking. And Giants GM Jerry Reese is too smart a personnel man not to recognize the fine line between irreverence and irresponsibility.

Burress now finds himself on the same side of the line that Jeremy Shockey ultimately found himself last year without ever pulling the trigger of a gun. Ultimately, your presence will be tolerated until your insolence is greater than your usefulness.

Maybe the Giants should have learned from other teams' lessons. Latrell Sprewell was a soul worth saving for the Knicks until he ultimately became a cancer in his own clubhouse. There are similarities aplenty between Sprewell and Burress, right down to this: ultimately, keeping Sprewell would have meant losing something much deeper, much greater. It was one of the last smart things the Knicks did until recently.

Ultimately, a team has to live with itself. And the Giants, ultimately, will live with themselves a lot more peacefully when they cut ties with No. 17 and allow some other team to engage in the difficult art of Placating Plax.