Brian Burns didn’t practice all week, played Sunday’s game on a sprained left ankle and now is out for the season with a torn ACL in his right knee.
So the Giants have lost their starting quarterback and their top pass rusher for the season in back-to-back weeks.
“He’s not just a great player,” John Harbaugh said Monday. “In many ways, he’s the leader of the defense. You hate to see it. The fact that we’ve got our quarterback one week and probably our top defensive player the next week is shocking.
“But you’ve got to overcome the shock, and you’ve got to get ready to play the next game and find a way to win the next game,” the coach continued. “That’s what we’ll be doing as a team. But I feel bad for Brian more than anything. My heart breaks for him that way.”
Burns, 28, dropped to the ground in agony on his 25th snap of the Giants’ narrow 12-7 win over the Tennessee Titans. He crumpled after a routine block by Titans center Austin Schlottmann, a former Giants teammate, who had peeled back to the play’s back side to take on Burns.
Burns grabbed his knee and pounded the ground with his fist in pain. The Giants did not put Burns on a cart. Teammates Aaron Stinnie and Andrew Thomas carried him off by his shoulder. Then trainers took him that way into the locker room.
“It’s rough,” Stinnie said. “In that moment, you just gotta be there for your guy.”
Head coach John Harbaugh said postgame that “there is some hope there” on the results of initial tests of Burns’ knee after the game but qualified “we won’t know until we see the MRI.”
So for a second straight week, the Giants’ early optimistic projections about a high-profile player injury seemingly were wrong.
A front office member had told ESPN on the sideline of the Giants’ 28-6 loss to the L.A. Rams that Dart was “going to be okay.” The next day, an MRI revealed a torn meniscus and damage to the MCL and PCL that required surgery on Friday, which ended Dart’s season.
Dart declined the cart and walked off the field under his own power after getting injured. Then he got on the cart once he got in the tunnel.
Burns sprained his left ankle in the fourth quarter of that loss to the Rams when he got rolled up on by L.A. offensive lineman Coleman Shelton.
The Giants sent the cart to the sideline to take Burns into the locker room when the game ended, but he declined it and hobbled off under his own power.
In the postgame locker room at SoFi Stadium, Burns’ ankle was badly swollen, and he could barely walk, hobbling around when he did stand up.
Fellow edge rusher Abdul Carter said Burns set an inspirational example by sitting out practice all week and playing through the ankle sprain against the Titans.
“It just shows the type of man he is, the character he has, how much he loves us, how much he loves the team,” Carter said. “And he has all my respect.”
There is also the question of how much Burns’ torn ACL may have been related to his sprained ankle and whether he should have been cleared to play under the supervision of senior VP of medical services and athletic training Ronnie Barnes, head athletic trainer Adam Bennett, Harbaugh and the team’s doctors.
Prior to Sunday, Burns had been an NFL ironman, playing in 116 of a possible 119 regular season games during his career with the Carolina Panthers (2019-23) and Giants (2024-26).
Dr. Daniel Kaplan, a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon at NYU, said “the direct answer is yes,” it is possible for one injury to cause the body to overcompensate and injure another area. But there are more factors to consider, he said, and he trusts the Giants’ “excellent medical staff” thought them all through.
“If they thought that risk was at all real — and I’m sure they did everything right — I wouldn’t second-guess them in that sense,” Kaplan told the Daily News Monday. “Of course hindsight’s 2020, but yes, if you have one injury does put you at risk of another injury.”
Kaplan, who has worked with the NBA’s Chicago Bulls and Major League Baseball’s Chicago White Sox, said “whenever we’re evaluating a player and making a value judgment about whether they can go in or not go in after the first injury, the first thing we’re concerned about is the status of the injury that they already had.”
In Burns’ case, the first injury was a low ankle sprain.
“First, range of motion. Can he move the ankle?” Kaplan said. “Then number two, does he have strength in the ankle? And number three, can he do football specific movements? So for him, that would be a quick burst and some lateral side-to-side stuff. If he can do those things, then he reaches the threshold for going back.”
That said, Kaplan said the last question for a player in Burns’ situation is “can he protect himself?”
“There’s always a risk of re-injury to the first body part that we’re concerned about,” he said. “But then in addition, if he’s off because his left ankle isn’t able to basically support him, then there is risk to other injuries. Because now he might be in a position where he’s asking his right knee to do something unnatural or bear a certain load that it’s not used to, or he might end up pivoting because he’s pushed off in a way that he shouldn’t supposed to.
“So yes, that’s a long answer saying there is a risk of that happening.”
Kaplan said it’s important to know that anyone outside the Giants’ building doesn’t know truly what information the Giants’ trainers and doctors had to make the decision, either.
“In retrospect, yeah, sure, he probably shouldn’t have gone in if he wasn’t, but it’s hard to know,” Kaplan said. “We just don’t have the info. What was he like in the couple days leading up to it? How did he feel? Did he feel like he was strong?”
Not to mention if the player is determined to play, that can make the lead-up to the final call more challenging.
“As someone who is a team physician often, that is the hardest conversation to have,” Kaplan said. “These guys, every game matters to them, contracts matter, especially the pro level stats matter. So none of them are ever going to say, ‘Take me out, coach.’”
Without Burns, the Giants will have to lean harder on Kayvon Thibodeaux — who started over the impaired Burns on the edge Sunday — and on Carter to wake up a dormant pass rush.
They have only one sack three games into their first season without star defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence, who frequently commanded double teams. Only the Miami Dolphins (zero) have fewer sacks as a team.
Maybe the Giants will ask rookie off-ball linebacker Arvell Reese to do more on the line of scrimmage, too. He has played only 30 of his 177 snaps through three weeks on the edges or near the line, per Pro Football Focus.
“I don’t really know how to answer that,” Reese said when asked if he was willing to take on more pass rush responsibilities with Burns out. “I mean for myself, I already got high standards. So I feel like there’s already a lot on my shoulders. If that’s what comes with it, that’s what comes with it. So I’ll take that on.”
Regardless, losing Burns for the season on top of Dart is a massive blow. And it will create an even bigger challenge to get this team off the mat for their Week 4 home game against the Arizona Cardinals (1-2) at MetLife Stadium.
