Brian Burns played through an ankle sprain for most of Sunday’s win over Tennessee, took a hit to the knee in the fourth quarter, and did not come back. Burns is out a week after Dart’s season ended, and if the belief that he tore his ACL holds up, the Giants have now lost the two players who actually built their 2-1 start.
The Giants sit at 2-1 in John Harbaugh’s first season in New York, a record that looked like proof of concept right up until Dart’s own season-ending knee injury against the Rams in Week 2. Jaxson Dart tore his MCL and PCL and damaged his meniscus on that play; the ACL, somehow, stayed intact. Harbaugh confirmed season-ending surgery on Wednesday, with a postseason return left theoretically on the table.
Jameis Winston is the Giants’ starter now.
He didn’t win the job in camp. He’s just the insurance policy the Giants signed Jameis Winston to be, activated a year earlier than anyone in that building wanted.
Burns earned that money. He posted a career-high 16.5 sacks last season, a second-team All-Pro year that ranked second in the NFL and marked the most sacks by a Giant since Jason Pierre-Paul in 2011.
This year was different before Sunday ever happened. Burns played all three of the Giants’ games on that same ankle sprain, and through three weeks he had zero sacks to show for it. For three weeks, the most feared pass rusher in the building was doing his damage in the trainers’ room instead of opposing backfields.
Harbaugh held Burns out of practice all week before clearing him as a gameday call against Tennessee. He played anyway. I’ve watched the Cardinals make this same call, clearing a hurt guy because the alternative is admitting the depth chart is thin, and it rarely ends with him finishing the year.
Then came the fourth quarter. Former teammate Austin Schlottmann blocked him at the knee, and Burns grabbed his leg, needed help off the field, and walked straight past the medical tent to the locker room, by every account in serious pain.
That kind of exit doesn’t happen for a sprain.
Adam Schefter and Ian Rapoport reported Sunday night that Burns is believed to have torn his ACL, pending the MRI that will make it official for a Giants team that can’t afford to wait.
https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/2104538137930117586
Nothing here is confirmed until imaging says so, but the belief alone is enough to reframe the season. The Giants’ pass rush without Brian Burns was already thin behind a rebuilt secondary, and now it may have to survive the rest of 2026 without its best player entirely.
John Harbaugh came to the New York Giants to build a program, not just win games in year one. Now Harbaugh’s first season just became a depth-chart stress test nobody in that building wanted this early, with the two players who authored a 2-1 start both watching from the sideline in street clothes.
Harbaugh’s first season in New York just lost its two best arguments.
