Back from the Dead, with a little help

This is a story about believ­ing in some­one even when he makes mis­takes. Super Bowl star Plaxico Buress has been on a roller coster ride the last few years. The ride just got even more inter­est­ing this week.

Hero gone bad

For every­one who fol­lows pro­fes­sional foot­ball, the name of Plaxico Buress will be for­ever etched in their mem­ory. He had made the win­ning catch in the last sec­onds that helped the under­dog New York Giants win the Super Bowl three years ago.

Plaxico was a hero in New York after that game. But a few months later he made a big mis­take. It was a mis­take based on bravado and arrogance.

Plaxico went into a bar one evening in New York City. He prob­a­bly did not need to be in that bar. He was mar­ried, and his wife was expect­ing their sec­ond child. He prob­a­bly should have been with her, not out look­ing for a good time on his own.

Plaxico knew that foot­ball play­ers often get chal­lenged in bars by show-​​off guys. These show-​​off  guys like to pick fights, maybe to impress their friends or girl­friends. Some sports stars have taken to car­ry­ing guns into bars in order to “pro­tect” themselves.

Not a good idea.

Plaxico was one of them. At one point the gun Plaxico was car­ry­ing began to slide down his pants. As Plaxico reached to retrieve it, the gun mis­fired. Luck­ily, Plaxico did not hurt any­one else, but he did hurt him­self. His wound was not career end­ing, but news of the dan­ger­ous event got to the press.

Plaxico had done a stu­pid thing, putting other peo­ples lives in dan­ger. And the reac­tion of the pub­lic and the jus­tice sys­tem was swift. Plaxico was sen­tenced to two years in prison for ille­gally car­ry­ing a hand­gun. The mayor of New York City and other pub­lic fig­ures, jus­ti­fi­ably con­cerned about vio­lence in the city, wanted to send a strong mes­sage: no mat­ter how impor­tant you are you will be pros­e­cuted if you put other people’s live in danger.

So the Super Bowl star went to prison.

Alone, but not quite

That’s where this story really begins. What do you do when you are in prison because you messed up? How do you pull your life back together again?

One way to pull your­self back together is hav­ing friends who still believe in you. Plaxico did have a few friends. One key friend these last few years has been Bran­don Jacobs, a team­mate on the New York Giants.

Bran­don plays run­ning back for the Giants. He is very big for a run­ning back: 6 foot 4, and 265 pounds. Bran­don has some­times got­ten into trou­ble him­self for his tem­per (He once threw his hel­met into the stands after a bad game.He was recently fined $20,000 for exchang­ing punches with an oppos­ing player in a pre­sea­son game.), so he knew what it was like to be shunned by the press and teammates.

Bran­don Jacobs called his friend Plaxico every week while Plaxico was in jail. He was the only mem­ber of the Giants call him on a reg­u­lar basis. He was also the first per­son to visit him in jail.

Bran­don says, “I know what kind of life Plax lived grow­ing up. I know what kind of life I lived grow­ing up. And I know no one else can really judge that.”

Being there for the boy

But Bran­don did more than than just call Plaxico in jail. Bran­don also spent time every week with Plaxico’s chil­dren. He espe­cially tried to be there for Plaxico’s son, Elijah.

Eli­jah missed his dad a lot. He was only a year and a half old when his dad went to prison, and did not under­stand what hap­pened. Dur­ing the past two years Mr. Jacobs came over every week to visit Eli­jah and let him have “guy time”. Lit­tle boys love to play “rough house”. It helps them grow emo­tion­ally. They usu­ally do this with their dad or their older broth­ers. Mr. Jacobs made sure Eli­jah had this kind of time. He also had Eli­jah and the rest of his fam­ily over to visit very often. Mr. Jacobs has a son, Trevor, who is the same age as Eli­jah. The two became close friends.

Plaxico’s wife Tiffany calls Mr. Jacobs and his wife Kim “our family”.

In a inter­view for the Wall Street Jour­nal last year Kim explained, “He (Mr. Jacobs) and Kim both go so out of their way. Eli­jah talks to Plax on the phone very day, but Bran­don makes sure Eli­jah has some­one here.”

Believ­ing in the greatness

Mr. Jacobs explained his involve­ment as sim­ply being a friend to some­one he admired. “Plax has over­come a lot things in his life peo­ple don’t know about. If he was home right now, he’d be doing all these things I do with Elijah.”

Both Plaxico Buress and Bran­don Jacobs grew up with­out the pres­ence of a father. Both had to strug­gle to over­come poverty and atmos­pheres of vio­lence as they grew up.

Our great­est heroes are often our friends and fam­ily. We know their strug­gles, their weak­nesses and fail­ings, and we see their effort to over­come these things. Bran­don Jacobs saw a hero in Plaxico Buress, and did his part to help Plaxico believe in himself.

Being for­got­ten

Even though Plaxico was vis­ited by Bran­don and sev­eral other team­mates dur­ing his stay in prison, he felt slighted by the lead­er­ship of the team. The coach of the Giants, Tom Cough­lin, never vis­ited him, nor did the star quar­ter­back, Eli Man­ning, whom Plaxico had defended at moments when Eli was not very suc­cess­ful. In a recent inter­view Plaxico said Coach Coughlin’s state­ments to the press about him dur­ing his time in trou­ble were pretty cold and uncaring.

Mr. Buress made the deci­sion not to return to the Giants once he got out of prison. This sum­mer he  accepted an offer to play for the New York Jets.

New start: so far so good

Some peo­ple were doubt­ful that Plaxico could still play well after two years in prison, but on the open­ing game of the new sea­son Plaxico caught sev­eral clutch passes for his new team, includ­ing one for a touch­down. His catches helped the Jets win in a very close game with the Dal­las Cowboys.

Plaxico claims that his time in prison did him a lot of good. It made him appre­ci­ate his wife and chil­dren as the best thing in his life. It gave him time to pray and grow in his rela­tion­ship with God. It made him resolve to be a bet­ter person.

But his time in prison also made him see that some peo­ple can be pretty cold. When he was no longer use­ful to the Giants lead­er­ship he was for­got­ten. That hurt very deeply, and it made him look for another team.

It seems he has found a team that believes in him. Jets Coach Rex Ryan has encour­aged Plaxico in his come­back and has had noth­ing but pos­i­tive things to say about him. That trust seems to be pay­ing off.

Only time will tell if Plaxico will con­tinue to do well in foot­ball and in life. None of us knows exactly how we will react to life’s chal­lenges. Each day is a new begin­ning and a new chal­lenge. But Plaxico can thank for­mer team­mate Bran­don Jacobs and his new coach Rex Ryan for help­ing him through this “bump on the road”.

Hate the sin, not the sinner

Mr. Jacobs’ exam­ple of friend­ship and com­mit­ment to Mr. Buress can help all of us. Believ­ing in the great­ness in oth­ers can pay rich div­i­dends, not just in foot­ball, but in life.

As Chris­tians we know that Jesus believes in our great­ness even when we mess up. Jesus often got in trou­ble with the reli­gious lead­ers of his day because he spent so much time with peo­ple who were pub­lic sinners.

It’s true, Jesus con­demned sin very clearly, but it’s also true that he con­stantly reached out to sin­ners. He was always invit­ing them to redis­cover the joy of liv­ing in the Father’s house. And Jesus died to pay for our sins.

Redemp­tion

Pun­ish­ment is nec­es­sary some­times, so that we do not con­tinue hurt­ing our­selves and oth­ers. But we also need redemp­tion. We are loved by God. He knows we still have the capac­ity to be holy and to live mean­ing­ful lives. He still sees us as his children.

Bran­don Jacobs knew Plaxico Buress had over­come adver­sity in his life before. He knew he could do it again.

That’s some­thing to salute. That’s some­thing to imi­tate. That’s some­thing Chris­t­ian. That’s some­thing richly human.