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Brian Burns finished the 2025 season with 16.5 sacks, the second-highest total in the NFL behind Myles Garrett, and a second-team All-Pro nod that made the Giants’ 2024 gamble look cheap. He opens training camp on July 28 as the anchor of what may be the deepest edge room in football.
Burns arrived from Carolina in a blockbuster 2024 trade and signed a five-year, $141 million extension, a steep price that 2025 justified with the disruptive season the deal demanded. The question is no longer whether Burns is good. It is how defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson divides snaps among three players who all deserve them.
A 16.5-sack season that justified the trade
Burns started all 17 games in 2025 and produced 16.5 sacks and 22 tackles for loss, the most complete season of his seven-year career. PFF graded him 75.8 overall, 25th among 115 qualified edge defenders, with a 71.5 pass-rush grade built on 53 total pressures.
Per Spotrac, the Giants converted $22.75 million of his 2026 base salary into a signing bonus this offseason, trimming his cap hit to $21.38 million and signaling they plan to keep building around him.
The pressure-to-sack math behind the room
Burns was the finisher, but he was not the most disruptive rusher on his own line. Rookie Abdul Carter generated 66 total pressures on his way to just 4 sacks, the kind of gap between disruption and production that tends to close in Year 2. Kayvon Thibodeaux managed only 2.5 sacks in 10 games before a shoulder injury sent him to injured reserve, yet still posted 32 pressures on 494 snaps. Together the three accounted for 2,201 of the Giants’ 2,465 defensive snaps.
New York finished 2025 with just 39 sacks, 17th in the NFL, despite that pressure volume. If Carter converts even a third of his pressure surplus into sacks, the Giants jump toward a top-10 pass rush without adding a single player. The room already has one proven closer and two rushers primed to spike.
Dennard Wilson’s rotation puzzle
Wilson inherits a problem most coordinators would take gladly: three edge defenders who all warrant starter snaps. Burns led the trio in snaps in 2025, Carter earned a full-time role by December, and Thibodeaux returns healthy off a fully guaranteed $14.751 million fifth-year option that ensures he plays. The snap distribution is one of the defense’s open questions heading into camp. Sliding Burns or Carter inside on passing downs is the likeliest release valve, a look Wilson leaned on situationally last season with the Tennessee Titans.
The strength that has to carry the season
The Giants enter John Harbaugh’s first season leaning on their pass rush to cover a secondary full of questions, and Burns is the reason that plan is credible. His 16.5 sacks gave the front a genuine closer, and the pressure banked by Carter and Thibodeaux gives Wilson room to scheme. New York built this roster to win in the trenches. Burns is the player who has to make that identity real.
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