Plaxico Burress: I Stuck A Knife Right Through My Own Heart

After forty eight people were shot in New York City this weekend, I felt the need to get this off of my chest. This doesn't really have anything to do with football, but just what I can do to help young people in the community ... especially anybody that is going through something similar to what I went through. My focus right now is not about helping anyone in football, but helping people in life.

I have asked myself ever since the incident happened, where were my decision making abilities at that time? What led me to make a decision, or lack of judgement to put everything that I had worked so hard for, to just throw it away, so quickly. I let so many people down, my wife, my kids, my family, my fans, my community ... my priorities were not in the right place.

It was very hard for me to accept that although I thought I was a leader, and maybe I was a leader on the football field, in actuality I was so caught up in being part of my environment that I really was a follower. The problem is I realized all of this when it was too late ... you dream of winning the Super Bowl, getting a new contract, I had just had a son, I had my own shoe coming out on Nike the following year.