One outstanding season, one Giant $33m deal - Antonio Pierce is certainly a happy man.

The Bermudian NFL star should have no problem forking out for his annual return trips to the Island after signing for the New York Giants yesterday in one of the biggest deals of the off-season so far.

The 24-year-old always said he wanted to stay with Washington, where he has spent the past four seasons, but he also said he wanted to get his true value - and a 1000 percent pay rise should just about do it.

Leading the Redskins in tackling and being picked as second alternate for the Pro Bowl made the middle linebacker a valuable commodity and the Giants matched that with a $6.5m signing bonus and a $26m salary over five years.

It is understood his father, Cleo Burrows of Southampton, is currently visiting Pierce in the States, the perfect time to offer some fatherly advice as the youngster heads into a new world of super-stardom.

“Our defensive football team just got a lot better today,” general manager Ernie Accorsi said after the Giants lured Pierce away from Washington.

“Antonio Pierce is a sideline-to-sideline playmaker. We are not only pleased that we have him, but we are equally pleased that we don't have to play against him anymore.”

“I thought Antonio Pierce had an outstanding year at the middle linebacker position for the Washington Redskins,” said coach Tom Coughlin.

“We're very excited to have a player of his caliber join our defensive football team. I'm sure that our scheme, the way it's designed, will take full advantage of his aggressive play.” True to his pre-free agency word, Pierce gave the Redskins the opportunity to match New York's huge numbers, but coach Joe Gibbs wasn't prepared to stretch that far leaving Pierce to uproot and head to Giants Stadium to replace Kevin Lewis as the starting middle linebacker, playing inside Carlos Emmons and Barrett Green.

Much of the credit for the deal can go to agent Drew Rosenhaus, who Pierce hired towards the end of last season.

Rosenhaus, who played himself in the film “Jerry Maguire”, is the most famous agent working the NFL and it would have been he who persuaded Pierce to test the free agent waters and see what he was worth.

The decision seems to have been the right one for Pierce, leaving the 6-10 Redskins on a salary of $609,000 and moving to a revamped Giants keen to splash out to secure the right personnel.

Despite spending the day with Steelers middle linebacker Kendrell Bell at Giants Stadium, the Giants instead plumped for Pierce, certainly a cheaper option but also a player on his way up, rather than a veteran with increasing physical frailties.

But it was a surprising development considering the amount of time Bell, limited to three games last year because of a hernia, spent at Giants Stadium on Wednesday.

The 26-year-old, who played for Giants defensive co-ordinator Tim Lewis in Pittsburgh, arrived early on the first day of free agency and had a physical. Soon word spread around the NFL that the Giants and Bell had come to a deal.

But that deal, which was rumoured to include a $13 million signing bonus, turned out to be false alarm.

It's still not yet clear why the Giants backed off - whether it was his contract demands or something from his physical - but Bell left Giants Stadium with no contract and headed home.

That opened the door for Pierce and negotiations picked up with Pierce's infamously aggressive agent Rosenhaus after Bell left.

After using the hard-working but limited Lewis at middle linebacker last season, the Giants were in serious need of an upgrade and Pierce, who totalled 16 tackles in two games against the Giants last year, would seem to be the perfect fit.

He's a natural in the middle, calling plays and directing traffic and the Giants got him on a salary cap-friendly deal, leaving space for a backup quarterback and some new weapons and protection for young quarterback Eli Manning.

The move completes a dramatic overhaul of the linebacker corps for the New York outfit. The Giants added Carlos Emmons and Barrett Green via free agency a year ago and now finished the alterations with Pierce.

The loss will be a huge blow to the Redskins, the team he broke in with in 2001, with Gibbs describing him as a “real Redskin” and an off-season priority only the day before.

“I simply think that at the end . . . it become a situation where we would have kind of thrown our salary structure out,” Gibbs said

“I also think it would have affected us in what we want to do as far as adding other players.

“It's one of those things that you don't want to have happen. I said Antonio played great for us last year. We would have loved to get that done. But I think it's one of those things that we went as far as we could go, we felt like. And it's something that just didn't work out. I hate it.

“I think it's not going to happen very often to us, but I think there's sometimes it could happen.”

Pierce was picked up by the Redskins from Arizona undrafted and despite starting some games in his rookie season, he was relegated for the next two years to mostly special teams duty.

But an injury to veteran Mike Barrow opened the door for Pierce, who seized his opportunity in spectacular style.

Aside from leading the third-ranked NFL defence in tackles, Pierce, who spent his summers at camp in Warwick as a youth, also picked off two interceptions - including running one back for a 78-yard score against the 49ers - and recovered two fumbles.

He was highly regarded, impressing coaches by quickly mastering the complicated schemes of Gregg Williams, assistant head coach-defence.

“Wow. That's a lot of money,” Barrow, a former Giant, said of Pierce's offer.

“He definitely deserves anything he gets. . . . He did everything that they wanted him to do. He was the ultimate player.

“He was a coach on the field. He took his game to a whole ‘nother level.”

Pierce follows in the footsteps of Rocky Thompson, a running back with the Giants in the early 1970s.