5 individual battles to watch during Panthers scrimmages vs. Ravens
By Dean Jones
Brian Burns vs. Lamar Jackson
The Carolina Panthers are expecting Brian Burns to be the driving force behind a potentially top-10 defense next season. He’s adjusting well to a new leadership role and certainly looks the part from a physical standpoint, adding more muscle throughout the offseason is readiness for even more responsibility in 2021.
Burns will get a different challenge this week in the form of Lamar Jackson, who is the league’s most devastating quarterback when it comes to running the football out of the backfield when a play isn’t developing as expected.
Although the Florida State product won’t be permitted to hit Jackson fully during scrimmages, it will be a nice challenge thanks to the elite elusiveness the former NFL MVP brings to the table.
Burns needs to be more disciplined than usual.
Jackson is not your average pocket passer, after all.
Getting past a formidable offensive line of the Baltimore Ravens is something else Burns needs to overcome. So it promises to be an intriguing few days for the 2019 first-round pick and one that should tell us plenty about what we can expect from the defensive end moving forward.
Carolina’s best defensive player lives for this sort of stuff. So expect Jackson to get on his heels plenty when Burns is flying in his direction in the coming days.