John Tillman still remembers the kind of lacrosse player Ethan Burke looked like he’d become: a 6-foot-6 left-handed attackman with soft hands, a sharp eye and a frame that should have made him a problem for every defense he faced.
That player, Tillman believes, could have been a star at Maryland. Instead, Burke took the football route, wound up with the Ravens and picked up his first NFL sack Sunday against Tennessee, dropping Cam Ward for a 10-yard loss just before the two-minute warning as the Titans tried to stay alive.
“He was a guy who had everything, a guy you get excited about his potential,” Tillman said. “He probably would be playing pro lacrosse right now if he wasn’t playing on Sundays.”
For Burke, a sandy-haired outside linebacker, Baltimore has become a homecoming story. He was born in Pasadena, grew up a Ravens fan and once went door to door on Halloween dressed as Ray Lewis. Now he’s one of the feel-good names out of training camp, an undrafted rookie who fought his way onto the roster in April.
The path almost looked very different.
Burke had been around lacrosse since he was 3, and for a long stretch that was the sport that seemed to define him. His father, Zack Burke, a former lacrosse coach at Archbishop Spalding, thinks his son could have done even more in that game than he’s done in football. He said Ethan “would have changed the face of college lacrosse.”
Maryland saw enough early to make Burke an early commit. He was a standout junior at Westlake High School in Texas after moving around as a kid from Maryland to San Diego before settling in Austin, and Inside Lacrosse rated him a four-star recruit. At attack, his size made him unusual, but his left-handed stick work and field vision made him dangerous.
“I think my strengths were being able to overpower people, see over the defense and read the field with my height,” Ethan said. “Just being able to be physical, be quick, just really attack the defense in many ways.”
His background explained the unusual profile. Burke is naturally right-handed, but he played lacrosse lefty like his father and his uncle, who also played the sport.
Then football started pulling him away.
Westlake was a football factory, and Burke’s stock rose fast. The Chaparrals went undefeated that fall, and he was named defensive MVP of the district after piling up sacks and using those long arms to get into passing lanes. By his senior year, he had become a top-200 national football recruit with blue-blood programs involved.
Tillman understood what that meant. In lacrosse, scholarship money was limited before the NCAA House settlement changed the landscape. Men’s programs had only 12.6 scholarships to spread across rosters of 40 or more players, which often meant partial aid for most of the team.
So when Burke was close to signing with Maryland, Tillman picked up the phone and told Zack Burke to pause.
“He said, ‘I think Ethan’s gonna get a football scholarship - I promise you the deal I offer will be there any time if he decides to play lacrosse,’” Zack Burke recalled. “Coach Tillman did us a solid that day.”
Maryland might have stayed in the picture if football had been willing to make Burke a dual-sport player, but the family said it never heard directly from coach Mike Locksley or his staff. Burke instead turned his attention to Michigan, where he expected to play both sports.
That plan never got that far. In December 2021, a Texas coach called him during English class with a scholarship offer. Westlake is just 6 miles from the University of Texas football stadium, and Burke committed immediately.
“When you’re a kid and going to Westlake right outside the city, that’s every kid’s dream to play for the University of Texas,” Zack said. “He’s a homebody and didn’t really want to leave home.”
The draft process this spring brought its own round of uncertainty. Burke’s family knew the standard knocks - not big enough, not fast enough, not athletic enough - but they also knew what he did when the pads came on. He made plays at Texas, and they hoped that would carry him.
It nearly didn’t. Burke got no invitation to the combine and went undrafted.
Then Baltimore called.
His agent told him the Ravens wanted him in camp, and Burke made the most of the opportunity. Zack watched both Ravens preseason home games from M&T Bank Stadium with friends and family, and by the time Burke turned in a sack, a fumble and two pass breakups against Minnesota, his father felt certain the roster spot was coming.
“I knew they’d be crazy to get rid of him.”
Jill Riding Burke felt the same relief once the news became official.
“He had to go through a lot of disappointment,” she said. “He had to work his way with his grit to get to where he is now.
Going through that, you maybe feel like people don’t believe in you. I just love that he proved a lot of naysayers wrong.”
After Jill posted old photos of Ethan in Ravens purple, Baltimore latched onto the Maryland roots behind the rookie. But Burke’s story still carries the what-if of a lacrosse path that never happened. Looking back, he said he made the right call.
“Football is a rare opportunity - I feel like you got to take it and run,” he said. “I love lacrosse, but I like football too.”
Tillman has lost recruits to football before and expects he’ll lose more. Still, he was among the people congratulating Burke on making the Ravens. Burke never played for Maryland, but the Terps coach is still pulling for him.
“When we create these relationships, we never want to close the door,” he said. “We want good things to happen for Ethan. And they have.”
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