Burns, who made the Pro Bowl in 2021 and 2022 with Carolina, led the team with 17 tackles for loss in his debut campaign for the Giants. The next closest players were Lawrence, Micah McFadden and Kayvon Thibodeaux, with eight apiece.

Burns also became the eighth player in NFL history with at least 7.5 sacks in each of his first six seasons, joining Reggie White, Derrick Thomas, Jared Allen, DeMarcus Ware, Ryan Kerrigan, Aaron Donald and Yannick Ngakoue.

Still, Burns is perfecting his craft.

“It’s always been an uphill battle with me trying to add that into my game, but Dex is one of the best to do it and the way he does it – I mean, obviously he has brute strength but he’s so much smarter than that,” Burns said. “He’s such a master at manipulating body positions, and of course, it takes strength to do that, but it also takes length and technique and that’s something that he works constantly. But when I see him working and when he expressed that he wanted to help me in that area, shoot, why not? Everybody is trying to get better, so why not?”

The same goes for Carter.

The All-American out of Penn State has Lawrence breathing down his neck – literally.

“He sits right behind me in the meeting room,” Carter said. “So I’m always talking with him trying to get better. He helps me a lot.”

Carter’s addition to the room was the catalyst for much of the offseason hype, something Lawrence cautioned against in a speech to the defense on the eve of training camp.

“It’s all cool, but you can’t get into it too much,” Carter said of being praised before he plays a regular-season game. “I feel like once you start to drown yourself in that, you can get distracted. So, I feel like what those guys are saying in terms of us not proving it yet is real. We got to get to the season and show that dominance before we can call ourselves anything.”

And then Carter can finally sit down for a haircut. The rookie posted Wednesday morning that he won’t get one until he notches his first NFL sack.

“That’s why I got the hood on right now,” Carter said when speaking to the media post-practice.

Is it the longest it has been in a while?

“Yeah, for sure,” he said. “But it won’t be like this for long.”