Count Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride as one who can’t wait for Plaxico Burress to start practicing again. Although the wide receiver is putting together a Pro Bowl season on that sprained right ankle that has kept him sidelined during the last six weeks, Gilbride said his weekday absence has now started to affect the offense adversely.

“As much as he’s been a real trooper and hung tough, there’s no question it’s getting to a point where it’s affecting his play,” Gilbride said. “There’s some catches he’d normally make that he isn’t, and his routes aren’t quite as precise.

“He’d be the first one to tell you. If we could get him back, that in itself would be a major factor in upgrading us and giving us a little more consistency.”

Tom Coughlin said Monday that Burress could return to practice next Wednesday after giving the ankle a good rest in this bye week. Indeed, the coaching staff would love to have him back, if only to hone his timing with a quarterback who still struggles with his own consistency in the passing game.

Manning went into the bye with a 58.2 completion rating, slightly below the 60 percent the staff had projected for him at the beginning of the season. He’s had stretches of good work; in fact entire halves of solid, on-point passing. But that one great game where he dominated beginning to end, with no silly mistakes in between, hasn’t happened yet.

The coaches, however, say that a healthy, working Burress would help all that develop.

“When he gets back, he’s going to be a better football player,” wide receivers coach Mike Sullivan said. “That’s going to help Eli. It’ll mean the difference between a close call and a completion; a controversial, was it or wasn’t it a defensive pass interference and a no-brainer easy completion.

“Like he said, there’s some magic pixie dust that gets him healed up for gameday. But with the bye week, it’s possible we can get him healed up as much as possible and we can get another strong eight weeks out of him.”

Be back later with some snippets from the rest of our session with the assistants.

Ciao for now.