At halftime of the Monday Night Football game between the Texans and the Jaguars three weeks ago, Drew Rosenhaus was given the opportunity to speak live about his client, Plaxico Burress‘ most recent legal situation. Rosenhaus did his usual clean up job, answering only the questions that he seemed to feel would help his client, and not addressing any critical questions about the facts of the incident.
For those of you who are not familiar with the situation, Burress apparently, fumbled a gun he was showing teammate Antonio Pierce at a night club on Friday. The gun somehow went off and hit Burress in the upper right thigh, causing him to go to a Long Island hospital. Burress appeared to be walking fine on Monday when he was charged, but beyond his gun shot wound many questions were still left unanswered.
NYC Mayor Bloomberg, the NFL, and NY Police have questioned Antonio Pierce and the Hospital that treated Plax, in reference to both covering up the incident. Pierce was believed to have hidden the gun at the nightclub after the shooting, and the hospital is being looked at for not reporting the gun shot to the Police imminently. The overall situation was a sticky one which Plax, Rosenhaus, and the G-Men would rather not have been involved in. All in all, these issues occur and that was some of what Rosenhaus and other agents must address and clear up along with negotiating million dollar contracts.
In the spotlight interview on the national stage of Monday Night Football, Rosenhaus showed his human side by talking about the health and safety of his client first, rather than the potential contract and legal ramifications that himself, the Giants, and many other Americans are wondering about.
Rosenhaus did an amazing job handling the issue early on national television, and continued to thank the NY Giants organization for their sincerity with the entire situation. Drew cleared up all rumors relating to Plaxico and the Giants, and applauded their organization for truly caring about his client’s health. Although Plaxico was suspended for the rest of the season, Rosenhaus’s attempts were not ill faded and the way he quickly handled the situation will help his client in the long run.
The emerging pattern of irresponsible, bad behavior by NFL and other professional athletes has caused for many teams and even agents to institute Moral Clauses in their clients contracts. Situations like the one we have here with Plaxico, may become more familiar amongst agents, and is something that a future agent will have to think about addressing along with contracts and endorsement deals.
5 replies on “Rosenhaus Picks Up Plax’s Fumble, Sort Of”
Zak, great job on this! I really do appreciate a post that does not slander Rosenhaus. DR is a stand-up guy in my opinion and is only looking to do right by his clients. Good stuff.
Dominic- I don’t disagree with you that he is only looking to do right by his clients, but I don’t think Rosenhaus did anything to mitigate the situation. While I understand it is and was an ongoing investigation, he spoke in vague generalities and seemed like it left more questions than it answered.
While this is true, many may agree (I could be wrong) that sometimes in situations like these, the last thing a player wants is for ALL of the truth to come out; teams try to keep this as “hush hush” as possible so I think Rosenhaus did a good job of covering up some of the technicalities.
Agreed, but as a fan watching that game and seeing the plethora of media coverage around the incident, I had hopes that at least Rosenhaus would tell me something that I didn’t know from Plax’s side instead of PR-speak.
Can’t disagree with that!