Barber and Buress

There have been rumblings that Tiki Barber is interested in the Pittsburgh Steelers. These rumblings have been fueled primarily by... Tiki Barber, to the point where, if you Google "tiki barber" the first suggestion you get is, "tiki barber steelers." He wants to play for a competitive team and the Steelers are a competitive team with a lot of veteran players. Well, Tiki, I'm sorry to say... no. Emphatically. No.

Take away the fact that he's 36 and left his wife to go bang an intern. We'll just take that right off the table (after mentioning it, because it's still important). The fact remains that he's a tailback and he's well over 30. Take away that and you are still faced with the fact that he retired following the 2006 season. You know who else retired following the 2006 season? Bill Cowher. Right? Seems like a long time ago. That's because it is.

You know who else retired in 2006? My Dad. Six months after he retired, we were supposed to meet at his house on a Saturday to move some stuff. He called me and left me a message at work that Saturday, saying that he needed to push the time back and asked if that would work for me. I had been working a 9-5 job for six years at that point. This is not to say that my Dad is a feeble-minded old man. He's not. This is just making the point that, when you're out of the game, you lose things. You lose your "edge" for lack of a better word. In games played at the NFL level, you cannot afford to lose that edge. Most teams know this and Barber will discover it. On top of all that, the Steelers would really only have interest in Tiki's brother Rhonde, since he plays cornerback and they need more of those. They should be all set at running back, especially if they retain Mewelde Moore.

For similar reasons, the Steelers should -- and probably will -- say no to Plaxico Burress. Take all the "out of the action" stuff for Barber and add, "because he was in prison." Remember when Jamal Lewis went to prison? There you go. For every Michael Vick example, there are a bunch of Jamal Lewis examples. Actually, Vick is the only guy that came back from prison and was worth something. That was also in his second season after he returned. The Steelers have enough talent at receiver -- and enough holes to fill elsewhere -- that they can afford to pass on Burress.

According to NFL.com, Burress is going to meet with the Steelers on Friday or Saturday.  He has a history with the team and my guess is that Ben Roethlisberger rallied pretty hard for Coach Tomlin to meet with Burress.  I thinking this is just a courtesy meeting, but there may be something there.  I'm also thinking that the Giants will be able to offer Burress a better contract, since the Steelers were already over the salary cap before they signed Ike Taylor.

This team needs to get younger, not older.  They usually sign their guys before signing free agents.  For all these reasons, I don't think there's anything there.