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Tuesday, October 15, 2002

By Ed Bouchette, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

When they inevitably produce the Plaxico Burress bobblehead doll, they might want to consider adding a swivel, because that's what his head has been on lately.

He's looking out not for hits from defensive backs, but for footballs thrown from Steelers quarterback Tommy Maddox. Just when Burress is about to get hit in the earhole of his helmet, his head swivels, his hands go up and he makes another reception.

It happened several times in Cincinnati and it's the kind of thing Burress warned everyone about a few weeks ago. He said that if a receiver comes out of his break and he's not looking, the football delivered so quickly by Maddox will bounce off the receiver's head.

"A couple of them, I didn't even see the ball," Burress said. "A couple of times, I turned around and -- bam!

"That's exactly what I'm talking about. You just get out there and run as fast as you can, you get to where you got to go and get your head around on the football. When I get to the line, I know when I'm going to get the football. When he throws it to me, we're on the same page."

Maddox and Burress are writing a whole new playbook. In a little more than two games, Burress has caught 15 passes for 251 yards and two touchdowns from Maddox. He tied a career-high Sunday with eight catches (for 149 yards) in Cincinnati. Through almost three games, Burress caught just six passes for 62 yards and no scores from Kordell Stewart.

It would be unfair to say that Burress did not have a rapport with Stewart because last season, after a slow start, he had 66 receptions for 1,008 yards and combined with Hines Ward as the first two 1,000-yard receivers in a Steelers season. But it has become obvious that Burress and Maddox have a special harmony going.

"He is a big target," Maddox said of Burress, who is 6 feet 5 1/2. "It's hard for them to match up a big corner on him because he is such a big target. He's able to stretch and get balls that a lot of receivers wouldn't be able to get. It's great -- we have a lot of receivers out there, so they can't really focus on one guy. If they do, we have to work it to the next guy. [Sunday] was Plaxico's turn. He had to be the guy to get open for us, and he did."

Part of the reason was Cincinnati's ill-fated decision to come with the blitz, which is why Maddox delivered the ball so quickly to Burress, who did not drop a pass even if he sometimes saw the ball at the last possible second.

"They blitzed us, I think, almost every third down," Maddox said. "They were bringing a blitz from his side and leaving him one on one out there, and he did a great job of getting off the guy, making a quick move, and getting the ball. We're probably going to see a lot of that, and we have to be good at picking it up."

Burress said the plays are no different with Maddox at quarterback than it was with Stewart, but he's obviously pleased with how things have progressed.

"Tommy's doing a good job picking up the blitzes and reading the blitzes and everybody's on the same page," Burress said. "When you got that going like that, you just move the ball down the field. That's what we've been doing the past three weeks since he's been in there, just moving the ball down the field.

"When you're playing with somebody like that, you just get to the line and say, 'How am I going to beat my guy?' because you know the ball's going to be there when it's supposed to be there. You just focus on what you have to do and don't worry about anything else. That takes a lot of load off and you just go out and play football."

If last season was the one in which he got over the hump, this could be one in which Burress becomes a Pro Bowl receiver. He ultimately will be judged on his consistency, not on his two- or three-game spurts, but Burress is on pace to match his totals from last season. At this pace, he would catch 67 passes for 1,002 yards.

But compared to last season, he's way ahead of his pace through five games. At this point last season, Burress had 13 receptions for 145 yards. He then burst onto the national scene by catching six passes for 151 yards against Tennessee in the sixth game on a Monday night at Heinz Field. The Steelers play Indianapolis Monday night at Heinz Field.

Tight end Mark Bruener, the team's player representative who has seen them come and go since 1995, believes hard work is paying off for Burress, the Steelers' No. 1 draft pick from 2000. Somehow, those words have rarely been connected with Burress, whose reputation at Michigan State as a poor practice player turned off some NFL scouts.

"It's because of what I see," Bruener said. "There are seven on sevens in practice where he's completely dominated the whole period. People need to understand, it might not look like he's running very fast or very hard, but the guy has such a long stride he's covering a lot of ground. If you line up Hines or Antwaan [Randle El] next to him, they look like they're running faster because their feet are turning more. With Plax, one of his strides is like two of theirs. Early in the year, he was trying to make some acrobatic catches and he wasn't making them so people said he's not trying hard."

For years, the Steelers searched in vain for a speed receiver. Burress has good speed but he's not in Randy Moss' range. Nevertheless, the Steelers believe that with his stride and his height, he can make the same kind of plays. He averaged 15.3 yards per reception last season and it's 14.9 this year, including 16.7 per catch from Maddox.

"A guy like that can completely change the momentum of a game in two plays," said Bruener, which is what Burress did when he caught a 36-yard pass from Maddox on the Steelers' second play Sunday. "He, himself, can turn around a football game by his height, his athletic ability, his speed. He can go up over a defensive back who's 5-10, 5-9 -- 6-foot even. He's really grown, and he's doing a good job building on his performances, and he's not playing great one week and poor the next. He's getting better with each week."