Giants' Brian Burns off to a super start in second season with club

Brian Burns was unprepared for one of the key plays in the Giants’ win over the Chargers last week.

Late in the fourth quarter, he came tearing through the middle of the Chargers’ offensive line on a stunt from the outside and chased down Justin Herbert for a sack to help seal the victory.

That part he was plenty primed for. The celebration that followed?

“I didn’t have anything ready,” he told Newsday.

So he went to his old standby, the move he developed in college at Florida State in which he mimics Spider-Man shooting webs, then rolls on the ground and lands in a superhero pose.

“That came off the dome,” he said. “It kind of just happened. But it was perfect. Everybody loved it.”

There’s been a lot to love about Burns’ play this season.

With five sacks, he’s off to one of the best starts for any Giants pass rusher this century; through four games, only Osi Umenyiora had more since 2000, and his six in 2007 all came in one epic game against the Eagles.

After four weeks, Burns was tied for the league lead in the category with Byron Young of the Rams. And yes, about a quarter of the way through the season, he is on pace to approach the single-season record of 22.5 sacks set by Michael Strahan in 2001 and tied by T.J. Watt in 2021.

Even more than those sacks, Burns has been wrecking plays all over the field. He’s been lining up at his traditional outside linebacker spot but also playing off the ball in the middle and dropping into coverage. And on both interceptions the Giants had last week, it was Burns who supplied the pressure.

Watching him play this year brings two thoughts to mind:

The first is that he is performing at a ridiculously high level.

The second is that he must have been really hurting last season, his first with the Giants, when he was a productive player but had nowhere near the kind of verve and voracity he currently is displaying.

Burns said there is truth in both.

“Yeah, I was [messed] up last year,” he said of dealing with groin and Achilles issues for most of the schedule. “A grade-2 groin, that can mess you up a little bit.”

But it’s not just his physical health that has allowed him to flourish. During this offseason, he rededicated himself to the basic details of being a pro — eating well, hydrating properly — and became determined to take his game to a new level. So there has been more video study, more questions in meetings.

More of everything.

More results . . . even if those aren’t necessarily what he is after.

“It’s a different process,” he said. “I am focusing on how it looks more than being based on the stats. I’m looking at how I’m playing more than the sacks. I like the sacks, don’t get me wrong, but at the same time, I want the way I look, how I’m playing, to look a certain way. I understand every play isn’t going to look that way, but I just want more plays to look like that than don’t.”

Teammates noticed it back in the spring.

“From the start of OTAs throughout camp, you could tell he was pressing with a purpose,” defensive lineman Rakeem Nunez-Roches told Newsday. “He was the fastest guy, he’s the most focused.  Every rush felt like it was going to get us to where we wanted to go, to the Super Bowl, the playoffs, and now it’s just jumping off the screen.”

Burns already had lived up to the price the Giants paid in acquiring him from the Panthers last year (a second- and a fifth-round pick plus a new five-year, $141 million contract) when he recorded 8.5 sacks and was one of the team’s best defensive players. This season he is making that cost look like a steal — and he still is only 27 years old!

Nunez-Roches said he started out thinking Burns was shooting for a Pro Bowl season like the ones he had with the Panthers in 2021 and 2022. Soon after, he believed Burns was aiming for being an All-Pro. Now?

Nunez-Roches said if Burns can continue on this path, he should be in consideration for Defensive Player of the Year . . . and he even mentioned the possibility of a gold jacket at some point after that.

“There were certain attributes he already had — length, great athleticism — but then when he put that work ethic with it, that’s when it got scary,” Nunez-Roches said. “I don’t know what clicked in his head or if he felt like somebody was over him last year that he felt shouldn’t have been over him. Or maybe he just felt, bro, this is my year to claim that I am the best pass rusher in the league.”

Burns isn’t worried about those titles and honors. They’ll come as long as he keeps playing the way he has been.

“This is the fastest start I have ever [had],” he said. “Just the way it looks, I feel like I caught my stride early. Now I have to maintain it. I don’t want to go into a drought. That would be the worst.”

Burns doesn’t have a specific number in mind for a sack total this season. Rather, he said, he just aims to record one per half in each game he plays. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s what he tells himself he wants to accomplish.

Still, he is aware of where this season may be headed.

“If I stay on this pace, I could break the damn record,” he said of the mark held by Strahan and Watt. “That would be sick, I ain’t gonna lie. That would be sick.”

He’s going to need a lot more webs to sling to celebrate that.