The Giants have already done the hard part with Brian Burns. The real question now is whether they’re ready to stop treating his contract like a problem for later.
Joe Schoen has pushed money into the future twice in less than a year, and the moves have bought New York more than $27 million in cap space between 2025 and 2026. That helped in the moment. It also left the Giants staring at Burns’ $44.1 million cap hits in each of the next two seasons unless they change course.
That’s the part that makes the next step feel so clear: an extension.
Burns is already under contract through 2028, so the Giants don’t have to do anything immediately. But they’ve already set themselves up for a messier bill down the line.
In May 2025, Schoen converted $16 million of Burns’ salary into a signing bonus and created roughly $12 million in cap room. Then in March, he converted another $22.75 million and opened up another $15.1 million for 2026.
Those moves are why Burns sits at a relatively manageable $21.4 million cap hit this season, despite being one of the league’s top pass rushers.
The back end, though, is where the numbers get ugly. Those restructures helped create the $44.1 million cap hits in 2027 and 2028. The Giants can live with that for now - they’re projected to have about $50.7 million in cap space entering 2027 even with Burns already on the books - but there’s an obvious cleaner path.
Give him more years. Spread the money out. Keep one of their best players in New York.
That idea matters even more because Burns isn’t the only pricey name on the roster. Andrew Thomas’ cap hit rises from about $13 million this season to just under $30 million in 2027 after New York restructured his deal, and Kayvon Thibodeaux is set to hit free agency after this season. Spotrac has Thibodeaux’s current market value at roughly $21.3 million per year.
So the Giants are staring at a few different expensive decisions, but Burns stands out as the simplest one. He’s a three-time Pro Bowler, and the Giants knew exactly what they were buying when they traded for him and gave him a five-year, $141 million extension in 2024.
Paying a premium for a premium edge rusher makes sense. Repeatedly borrowing against the future is the part that starts to look shaky.
An extension would not erase the bill. It would just give New York more room to manage it while keeping Burns around beyond 2028. At some point, that matters as much as the cap relief itself.
Jaxson Dart’s rookie deal makes all of this easier to stomach, and that’s the other reason the Giants have some room to operate. Dart will only be entering Year 3 of his rookie contract in 2027, which gives the team a window to spend around a cheap quarterback before the big-money extension conversation arrives. That’s the kind of setup that lets a team absorb heavy contracts at other premium spots.
Burns, who turns 29 next April, is fresh off an NFC-leading 16.5-sack season and remains the centerpiece of a defense built to hunt quarterbacks. The Giants have the luxury of a low-cost quarterback for the next three years, and that’s the time to keep surrounding him with high-end talent.
They just shouldn’t keep making Future Joe Schoen pay for it every time.
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Giants-Titans Suddenly Feels Like More Than A Typical Week 3 Game
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For the Giants, it adds an extra layer to a game they are expected to win. These kinds of meetings can feel ordinary on the schedule until the personnel overlap starts to matter, and this one has enough of it to make the matchup feel more personal than usual. Between the recent departures and the coaching crossovers, there will be no shortage of familiar faces on both sides when the ball is kicked off Sunday. [Read more 🡒]