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How Big Blue could have gone back-to-back if Plax hadn’t put bullet in his leg

It is rare indeed to wake up in the morning feeling so excited and confident about your job and your impending performance in that job that you cannot wait to get to work and start your dominance. This is the way Shaun O’Hara greeted the day when he played center for the Giants during the 2008 season. “That year, I tell people all the time, was the most fun I’ve ever had playing football in my entire life,’’ O’Hara told The Post. “That year we literally kicked the snot out of people. I couldn’t wait to get to the stadium on Sunday, on game day, because we were that good.’’ How good? The Giants won their first four games, lost one, then ripped off six more victories to approach the end of November with a record of 10-1. Coming off their stunning upset of the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII, all signs pointed to the Giants claiming or at least making a serious run at another Lombardi Trophy, this time not as upstarts but as a legitimate powerhouse team. “I think that was the best team we had,’’ Amani Toomer, the Giants alltime receptions leader, told The Post. “It wasn’t like we were airing it out, either,’’ O’Hara said. “We’re gonna run the football. They knew it, we knew it, and there was nothing they could do about it. I know we won the Super Bowl the year before but we were a better team in 2008, we were a better offense in 2008 than we were in 2007. It was by far the best team I’d ever been on.’’

The best team was not the last team standing. The top wide receiver, Plaxico Burress, 11 games into the season accidently shot himself in the right thigh with an illegal handgun in a Manhattan nightclub. A season firmly on the tracks got derailed, the Giants made a one-and-done playoff appearance and Burress never again suited up for the Giants.

All these years later, members of the 2008 Giants wonder “What if ?’’ What if Plaxico didn’t stuff a Glock 9mm into his sweatpants before heading off to the Latin Quarter at 47th and Lexington that fateful night?

“I think about it every year around the Super Bowl, because everyone talks about how tough it is to go back-to-back and had we won that year people would have started saying the ‘D’ word,” O’Hara said, referring to the Giants being called a dynasty. “That’s how things would have changed.’’

The Giants that season played bully-ball. They had two running backs, Brandon Jacobs and Derrick

Ward, who would surpass 1,000 yards. They had Eli Manning, the freshly minted Super Bowl MVP. Coach Tom Coughlin believed the Giants were playing better than anyone else, and this is a man not prone to hyperbole.

Thanksgiving came and went. There was a Friday practice two days before a game at Washington. Burress, the lanky receiver who cradled the game-winning touchdown in the Super Bowl to prevent the Patriots from going undefeated, tweaked his right hamstring a week earlier and barely played the previous game. The Giants still had no trouble thrashing the Cardinals in Arizona. Burress, still ailing, did not practice two days before the Redskins game and was going to sit that one out.

Saturday morning, as players arrived for a walk-through practice before the quick train ride to Landover, Md., word started trickling in. Did you hear what happened to Plax last night?

“It was crazy,’’ Toomer said. “[Wide receivers coach] Mike Sullivan was telling us, ‘Hey, here’s what happened with Plaxico.’ I was like, ‘Oh, what did he do?’ He says, ‘He went to a club.’ I go, ‘Uh-oh.’ He says, ‘He had a gun.’ I go, ‘Uh-oh.’ He says, ‘And he shot himself.’ I go, ‘Uh-oh.’ It just kept getting worse and worse and worse. It was crazy.

“But I thought, ‘OK, he’s out for a little while. Luckily it didn’t hurt him that bad.’ I thought he’d be out a couple of weeks because the bullet wound wasn’t that bad.’’

The night of Nov. 28, 2008, changed everything. Burress, out with middle linebacker Antonio Pierce, faced charges of criminal possession of a handgun. Burress had an expired concealed carry license from Florida but no New York license. The Giants suspended him without pay.

A perfect storm was brewing. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Star receiver Plaxico Burress accidentally shot himself in the leg late in the 2008 season, when the Giants appeared on track to win their second straight Super Bowl. His absence was the catalyst that derailed a team which players insist was better than the 2007 championship squad.

GIANT MISTAKE: When Plaxico Burress accidently shot himself in the leg, it crippled the Giants’ pursuit of a second straight Super Bowl title. He was later arrested (inset top) on a gun charge and spent 21 months in prison.