Who will be the next Carolina Panthers’ breakout star? Here’s my candidate.
NFL teams — and their fans — are always looking for the next breakout star. The players who go from good to great are the ones who eventually key playoff runs.
Steve Smith was a Pro Bowl kick returner as a rookie, but he was buried on the bench as a receiver for a 1-15 team behind a guy named Donald Hayes. Wesley Walls was a nobody for the first five years of his NFL career in San Francisco, catching a total of 11 passes, before becoming a Pro Bowl tight end at Carolina.
Who can make that sort of leap on the 2020 Panthers?
I’d bet on defensive end Brian Burns.
As a rookie in 2019, Burns was a contender for NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year for the first half of the season. He had 4.5 sacks through the first six games and scored a touchdown on a 56-yard fumble return. He was a budding star with a signature sack celebration — posing like Spider-Man.
But offensive tackles started figuring out that you mostly just needed to negate Burns’ speed rush because he hadn’t developed an NFL-level counter move (then-Panthers coach Ron Rivera said as much to the media). Burns’ run defense — like the entire Panthers’ 2019 defense — was also very suspect. When veteran Bruce Irvin returned from injury, Burns’ snap counts and effectiveness both began to go down.
And Burns also suffered from making one of the most memorable rookie mistakes in Panthers history. Against Houston in Week 4, he deflected a punt but was frustrated that he didn’t actually block it, as the ball still traveled 19 yards forward.
Burns then made a regrettable move, slamming his right fist into the turf in frustration. And that — as we are prone to saying in the South — tore up that wrist real good.
His right wrist had already been giving Burns problems, and he had worn a wrap on it for many practices. This was the football equivalent of somebody punching a hole in the wall and hurting their hand in the process.
Burns eventually had minor surgery, had the wrist even more heavily wrapped and didn’t stop playing.
But he stopped playing as well. He had trouble grabbing offensive linemen and getting off blocks. He would still end the season with a very respectable 7.5 sacks, but there was obviously a lot of room to grow for Carolina’s No. 1 draft pick out of Florida State in 2019.
“I don’t blame myself because football, it’s an emotional sport,” Burns said in a recent video conference call with reporters when discussing his wrist. “So whatever happens, happens.... And no, I don’t think it was a wasted season. I think I had a good season for the amount of snaps I played (43.3 percent of the defensive snaps). And my injury.”
Burns said his wrist is fine now as he readies for his second season. He played last season close to 240 pounds, and the Panthers were pleased that he added some muscle in the offseason and showed up in Charlotte weighing around 255.
“I knew Brian’s talent,” Panthers coach Matt Rhule said. “But he takes the game very seriously and he showed up having put on some weight, which is one of the keys to him, right? He’s always going to be a great rusher, but we want him to be a complete and total defensive player. I think when you show up with the weight put on that he put on, you’re basically saying, ‘Hey, I want to do this.’”
Burns is only 22 years old — a building block on a defense that will be youth-centric this season. While the Panthers are switching back to a 4-3 from the 3-4 base defense they played in Burns’ rookie season, he doesn’t think that matters much. Said Burns: “I think I fit in any defense…. You can pretty much plug me in anywhere.”
Burns likes to keep his sack goals “classified,” as he said, but I would think he at least wants to hit double digits this season. Given Mario Addison’s departure to Buffalo and Irvin’s return to Seattle, there’s no reason why Burns shouldn’t lead Carolina in sacks in 2020.
“I think he’s going to have a special year,” Rhule said.
I do too. More than that, though, Burns has the potential to have a special career.
There are lots of “‘ifs” in that statement — if he gets better against the run; if he keeps away from injury, both self-inflicted and otherwise; if his bull rush becomes an effective counter to his speed rush.
But the potential is there. Burns just needs to harness it.
