MMQB Mail: Where the Giants go from here; more thoughts on Dr. Z

Linebacker Antonio Pierce played the most defensive snaps of any Giant last season. Rich Kane/Icon SMI

Forget Plaxico Burress the player, and forget the impact he's not going to have on the Giants' run to repeat as Super Bowl champions now that he's been placed on the non-football injury list. Instead, let's consider the three big factors the Burress fiasco will have on the Giants.

1. Can Chase Blackburn, if it comes to this, be at least a poor man's Antonio Pierce at middle linebacker? The whole story of Pierce's involvement in the Burress shooting in Manhattan has yet to be told. We can't assume it's going to end badly for him, because if the authorities and the NFL judge him to be cooperative and innocent, he won't miss any time and will be with the Giants as they finish their last quarter of the season (Philadelphia, at Dallas, Carolina, at Minnesota) and make their playoff run.

But there's enough smoke that the Giants have to be thinking he could miss some time, perhaps by a league suspension. If so, Blackburn, who has been starting at right outside linebacker for the past five weeks, would likely move inside to middle linebacker. Danny Clark would stay on the strong side and Gerris Wilkinson would return to the outside spot that he vacated because of injury earlier in the season.

Pierce is an every-down player and is the Giants' defensive signal-caller. In this day and age of frequent and last-second substitutions, the defensive signal-caller is vital to the unit because he has to make last-second personnel moves before the snap, and the defense has to have confidence in him to be able to make those switches.

Last year, when the Giants made their unexpected Super Bowl trip, Pierce led the defense with 992 snaps played out of 1,017 opposing plays -- 97.5 percent -- and nothing about that has changed this year. That's practically unheard of in this day and age of free substitution.

When he plays the pass, Pierce usually takes the tight end. Blackburn, 25, is not the athlete Pierce is, but he's smart enough to make up for that when dropping into coverage. He's an eager-beaver type, a career special-teamer with only seven starts at linebacker. Very smart. Very hard-worker.

Blackburn's biggest play this year came in Philadelphia, on a fourth-and-one with 1:55 left and the Giants up 36-31. He knifed through a gap and stoned Brian Westbrook, solo, for no gain, clinching the Giant win. Having said that, Pierce is more physical than Blackburn.

I'm told Blackburn would learn the chess match part of the job quickly because he's a quick study and works hard in the classroom. But there would be pressure on Blackburn to be the vocal and quarterbacking presence on defense. The pressure to do that well would be as great as the pressure to play well once the ball is snapped.

2. Can Domenik Hixon survive the mental and physical toll of replacing Burress? One vivid picture I recall from my trip to Giants' training camp last summer: a free-agent receiver named Brandon London from UMass was catching everything in sight. I asked Tom Coughlin after practice whether London had any chance to make the team given the treasure trove of talent on the roster at wideout. "He's got a chance -- a real chance,'' Coughlin said. "Just look at him out there.''

London didn't make it (he's now a Dolphin), but the point was made: Coughlin isn't worried about playing non-marquee guys if they're the best guys out there. He's always been that way, in Jacksonville and in New York.

Fast-forward to Sunday. Hixon started for the injured Burress, and Eli Manning was looking for him early and often. In the first 10 minutes of the game at Washington, Manning threw eight balls. The first, second, fourth and eighth went to Hixon, with three of them complete for a total of 41 yards.

Do you think Coughlin and offense coordinator Kevin Gilbride were trying to make a point? I do. The point was, We don't care who's out there. We're running the offense we think is best to beat what Washington's doing. So I don't fear Hixon being able to make enough plays to keep the Giants' offense purring. What I do fear is Hixon staying healthy for seven more games -- the four in the regular season, and three, potentially, in the playoffs. He's a stick figure -- 6-foot-2, 182 pounds. It'll be a challenge to keep him healthy.

3. Can the Giants survive the media circus in town? This should be the easy one. Nothing seems to faze this team. As one veteran GM told me this morning: "It's always easy to survive outside bleep-storms when you've got a good offensive line, good defense line and a cool quarterback."

That's the thing about this team. It never has a bad day on the lines, so no games ever seem to get out of control. And I wouldn't expect 125 media people in the locker room instead of 40 to matter much when it comes to how the Giants play on Sunday.

"We go on the field to play football,'' Justin Tuck told me the other day. "All the other stuff that happens ... I think we all realize, even if people on the outside don't, that worrying about other things doesn't help us win. The coaching staff and the leaders on this team don't let outside stuff factor into our preparation.''

I found it interesting that Tuck told me Pierce never mentioned the shooting or Burress' name a single time Saturday night at team meetings or Sunday during the game. I think it will become easy for the media and public to focus on "distractions,'' the catch-all word for stuff swirling on the outside of a team. It's a good angle. But with this team, time and again, it's not a very applicable angle.

Now onto your e-mail of the week.