In the wake of the Final Four run by North Carolina State’s 11th-seeded men’s team, a breakout performance by Wolfpack center DJ Burns Jr. caught the eye of more than just basketball fans. It would seem that some NFL executives are also interested in the burly but nimble big man.
At a listed 6-foot-9 and 275 pounds, could Burns switch sports at the pro level and succeed as an offensive tackle?
Asked Tuesday about the chatter surrounding his pass-protection prospects, Burns did not rule out exploring a career in football, but he noted that trying to make it in the NBA was “the plan.”
If that dream failed to come to fruition, Burns said on the “Dan Patrick Show” of possibly turning to football, “I’d probably explore some other options with basketball first before all of that.” Those options could include playing basketball overseas, Burns indicated, but he wasn’t taking anything off the table. “I’m not a closed-minded person,” he said.
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Talk of Burns going from playing in the post to pancaking pass-rushers ramped up a day after N.C. State’s Elite Eight upset of Duke, in which he showed off some nifty moves while scoring a season-high 29 points.
On Monday, NFL Network reporter Peter Schrager said on X that he had spoken with and texted “multiple” NFL general managers and scouts over the preceding 24 hours about Burns “as an NFL OT prospect.” Noting that the center’s footwork was deemed to be “A+,” Schrager said if Burns were to invite teams to watch him go through football-related drills after the Final Four, he would get a “big turnout.”
That post was soon followed by one from Senior Bowl executive director Jim Nagy, a former NFL scout who wrote he had gotten texts from several front-office figures in the league about an impression Nagy had shared Friday, when Burns helped the Wolfpack topple Marquette.
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“NFL interest in D.J. Burns is a real thing,” Nagy wrote Monday.
Anyone else having trouble watching N.C State big man D.J. Burns and not thinking about him kick-sliding in pass pro or getting out on pulls? Can't just be me. pic.twitter.com/QnqSaJ4uDB
— Jim Nagy (@JimNagy_SB) March 30, 2024In an episode of Schrager’s podcast released Tuesday, he said his exchanges with NFL executives suggested Burns “could make quite a bit of money” in the league if he panned out. Nagy, appearing on the podcast, noted that Burns would be a “developmental player” who probably would take “two or three years” to learn offensive line techniques. In addition, Nagy said, one of the unknowns of any basketball player aiming to switch to pro football would be the “toughness thing” — i.e., that player’s adjustment to a higher level of physicality in the NFL trenches.
As an example of someone who made that transition, Schrager cited George Fant, a former basketball player at Western Kentucky who switched to football for his fifth and final season there. Fant received scant playing time, but his athletic ability on a bulked-up physique got him signed by the Seattle Seahawks as an undrafted free agent in 2016. Fant has been in the NFL since, making 73 starts across seven seasons with three teams.
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As with Fant, an NFL-minded Burns would have to “maintain that quickness and agility while putting on weight,” offensive line analyst Dan Fornek said Tuesday in an online exchange with The Washington Post. That would be an element of the “challenging” part for the N.C. State center, along with Burns’s apparent lack of football experience since middle school, said Fornek, who provides analysis for Player Profiler and other sites.
Getting up to speed in the NFL would require that Burns develop a grasp of “spatial awareness” while forming a pocket around the quarterback, he added, and playing with “good leverage (low in his stance).”
On the other hand, Fornek said, Burns would immediately be bringing “the things you can’t teach when it comes to being an NFL offensive tackle.”
“He moves very well for a guy that size, and [Burns] does a great job of moving laterally in the paint on defense,” wrote the analyst, who played on the offensive line at Dayton and coached high school football for nine years, “If he’s exactly what he’s listed at (6-9, 275) then he’s a bit tall (but not ridiculously tall) and he’s very light and would need to put on some weight. He seems to have an appropriate wingspan for his height too, which is important at left tackle. The speed and quickness to move his feet would be extremely beneficial from a pass protection stance (mirroring the defender in space) and would allow him to move his feet quickly as a run blocker to engage and get movement.”
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Brandon Thorn, an offensive line analyst for Establish the Run and his Trench Warfare Substack, sounded less optimistic about Burns’s NFL chances.
Describing a successful transition to offensive tackle as “highly unlikely considering he doesn’t have experience playing [in college] from what I’ve seen,” Thorn said via email Tuesday that Burns’s “likely only shot” of making an NFL roster would be if he landed with a team boasting a particularly effective coaching staff. Thorn mentioned the Philadelphia Eagles’ Jeff Stoutland, who helped Jordan Mailata translate his talents from rugby, and the Tennessee Titans’ Bill Callahan as offensive line coaches who have had “the most success developing players.”
A top shelf left tackle can make $25 million per year. I don’t know enough about DJ Burns as an NBA prospect to know if that’s out there for him in basketball. But I don’t think a Jordan Mailata type of future for him in football would be totally out of the question. https://t.co/6WOKxwFXaD
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) April 1, 2024As far as his current sport goes, reaching the NBA could be an uphill climb for Burns, a graduate-eligible player for N.C. State in his sixth year in college after starting with a redshirt season at Tennessee and spending three seasons at Winthrop.
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Some NBA draft analysts don’t have Burns on their big boards at all. As of Tuesday, he was not among the 139 names listed in NBA Mock Draft Database’s aggregated rankings.
Checking in at ninth overall at the site was Duke’s Kyle Filipowski, who very much got the worst of his matchup Sunday with Burns. Next up for the Wolfpack big man is perhaps the tallest challenge in college basketball this year: 7-4 Purdue center Zach Edey.
Asked on the “Dan Patrick Show” how he and N.C. State might approach that daunting task, Burns replied with a smile that he wouldn’t “give that away.”
“Just know,” he added, “we’re coming with a game plan.”
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