Brian Burns tells Evan & Tiki that new Giants DC Shane Bowen 'has an attack mindset'
There was, indeed, bedlam in the WFAN studios when it was announced that Brian Burns was headed to the Giants, so it was a great scene when Burns joined Evan & Tiki live at Giants camp Tuesday.
He’s getting used to the bigger city of New York (even if he is mostly in New Jersey), which prompted Tiki to recall how Rodney Hampton once told him ‘don’t go into the city, you’ll get in trouble’ – but not to worry with Burns, who is ready for the expectations that go with the reality of being here.
“The process has been interesting, but I've been super excited; once everything happened, it happened so fast I had to hit the ground running, like figure out where I'm gonna live and what’s going on, but once I started to settle in and I started to get to know the guys and the history and everything like that, it's pretty exciting.”
Carolina was kind of keeping him in the dark about the trade, although he had heard some rumors about possible future destinations – but after seeing all the upheaval in Carolina,
“Just because of how loyal and how in the moment I am, I was focused; we always talked there about how we could flip it around, so we were pretty much stuck in that process,” Burns said. “But as the years started to accumulate, I never had a winning season, so you start looking back on it and, and just being like, ‘damn, I wanna win.’ It’s been a fast process for me, this is my first move so a lot of things are new, but I feel good about the season and the direction that we're headed in.”
He’s on a defense with two other quarterback monsters in Dexter Lawrence and Kayvon Thibodeaux, and now that new DC Shane Bowen has him focused on rushing, this could be a monster season for the Big Blue D.
“He’s just putting a lot of trust in us, a lot of responsibility on our shoulders, and I feel like it's rightfully so,” Burns said. “I definitely feel like we're embracing it, and I like that Shane has an attack mindset. I did a lot of dropping in Carolina, but I don't see a lot of that now. I want to go forward; if it’s a change-up, cool, but I don’t want to drop 60 times a year. We definitely have a friendly competition going on and it's kind of inevitable; even if we don't talk about it, it's kinda just, we know like, if I get a sack, I'm up on you, bro, you better tighten up! But there’s a lot of intense guys in that room, and when I first got in there, they were saying things I was already thinking.”
Which is good, considering he actually could name all six of his head coaches in Carolina (although Chris Taber was denoted as ‘our special teams coach’) but admitted that was quite difficult to deal with.
“It’s really difficult being a leader of a team, especially at a young age, because I always equate it to like having a bad breakup, and then you have to get to know your new head coach and what he likes, his standards, and preach it to the team,” Burns said. “It was difficult to have to keep doing that every other year.”
But he’s here now, and ready to rock.
“I was excited when I got traded, and it was mainly sourced just through a lot of the stuff I was going through that year and in the offseason,” Burns said. “I feel like there’s a lot of talent around, and there’s stars at every level. I feel like the defense, we can really tap into being on one page where the leaders step up and lead, and I feel like we can really do a lot of things.”
