The next big thing: Pittsburgh's Plaxico Burress is on the verge of becoming one of the most explosive wideouts in the game

Football Digest, Nov, 2003 by Ed Bouchette

Then he caught 66 passes for 1,008 yards in 2001 and looked to be on his way to stardom. Still, there was one more area that Burress needed to clean up: his personal life. Everyone says he has succeeded on that front.

"He doesn't go out as much as he used to," Ward says. "All he's thinking about is playing football, and that's good. I saw him evolve from a guy going out every night and trying to play on Sundays to now, where he's actually thinking about the game. He's studying the game, what he needs to do to get better, studying his opponents and not really going out. He's still having his fun, but he's not out on the streets like he used to be."

There was the time in Cleveland during the season when he was ticketed for carrying an open can of beer. There was another instance in his hometown of Virginia Beach in which he was charged with public intoxication. And there was a party he threw during the season in Pittsburgh at which Cleveland Browns defensive end Gerard Warren was nabbed for carrying an unlicensed gun that was loaded.

In the end, though, this was small stuff. The open beer amounted to a traffic ticket. A judge promised to clean the slate after the Virginia Beach incident--provided he kept his nose clean for a year, which he did. And it wasn't his gun in the Strip District, just his party.

Still, there was a pattern, which worried some people who thought Burress could be the most dominating receiver in the game if he ever put his mind to it. "Being a first-round pick, he was trying to be in the NFL and have a good time, too," Ward says. "He's now to a point in his life where he's had time, and he wants to be among the top echelon of wide receivers throughout the league."

Burress says two things dramatically altered his outlook on his sport and the party life. One was the natural maturing process, and other was the sudden death of his mother during the spring of 2002.

"That basically changed my life," Burress says of his mother's death. "Here I am, I was just looking at football as just something I was doing--I wasn't looking at it as a job. When she passed away, it kind of left me at the top of the family tree. It was like, we have to do some growing up real fast.

"You want to be going forward in life. And what I told myself when my mom passed is that I'm not going backward anymore. The day I feel I can't get better at this game, it's time for me to walk away."

With Burress, Ward, and slot receiver Antwaan Randle El, the Steelers believe they have the best group of receivers in the game. And that's something new for a team that traditionally has been built around the ground game and defense.

"We're the best tandem in football," Burress says, "and you can't put a better three receivers on the field--Hines, myself, and Randle El. If you can, I want to see it."

Burress and Ward were the NFL's third-leading tandem in receptions last year with 190," but that ranking is misleading. The No. 1 duo, the Buffalo Bills' Eric Moulds and Peerless Price at 194, broke up when Price signed with Atlanta in the offseason. And the No. 2 duo, Harrison and Reggie Wayne at 192, was powered by Harrison's 143 catches.