Brian Burns got a little giddy when talking about the new-look Giants defense that he is a part of. Between the $136 million invested in free agency that includes nearly $100 million on the additions of Paulson Adebo and Jevon Holland in the secondary, the selections of Abdul Carter — the third overall pick in April’s draft — and third-rounder Darius Alexander, and the return of second-year burgeoning stars Dru Phillips and Tyler Nubin, there is plenty to be amped up about.

That doesn’t even include Burns himself, now healthy after struggling through many nagging injuries last season, along with Bobby Okereke and Kayvon Thibodeaux.

“And,” Burns noted the way Captain America casually mentions his big green friend, “we have a Dex.”

That would be Dexter Lawrence, likely the team’s best player, who missed the final month and a half of the 2024-25 season with an elbow injury.

“The defense has definitely improved,” Burns said. “I think we have talent all around the board now. It’s just all about putting it together.”

Ah, yes. That’ll be the key, turning this unit that on paper looks as if it should be a top 10 defense in the league into one that actually plays like one. It’s a job that will fall on the shoulders of second-year defensive coordinator Shane Bowen.

He’s been given the pieces. Now he has to wield his Ikea wrench like a magician.

There were plenty who thought Bowen might be one-and-done at his job here after team president and CEO John Mara shredded the Giants’ defense shortly after the end of the 2024 campaign.

“Quite frankly, I didn’t think our defense played very well this year at all,” Mara said in January. “I’m tired of watching teams go up and down the field on us, so I think that has to be addressed.”

It was. And Bowen got to stick around and be part of that process.

Now, in a building in which just about every coach needs asbestos undies to sit in all the hot seats, Bowen may have the most important job of anyone. If he succeeds, the Giants could have a very good season. If he fails, well, he could wind up taking a lot of his colleagues out with him.

Pressure? No, Bowen insisted.

“I’m driven by the guys,” he said. “My job is to get these guys ready to go out there to execute at the highest level, to maximize their potential, and to perform and ultimately win. So I’m driven by that. That’s really what fuels me. Don’t really feel the pressure of it.”

But there definitely is urgency and intensity to make sure that all the pieces the Giants’ front office added can fit together. That means getting creative in using Carter with the rest of the edge rushers. It means finding ways to let Lawrence dominate the middle of the line of scrimmage. And it means letting that secondary mesh together.

So far, it’s looked good. Russell Wilson faced the Bowen-designed defense when he was the quarterback for the Steelers last season and has been going up against this rejiggered version in spring workouts.

“I think we got a really, really talented defense,” Wilson said. “Hopefully they can get us the ball, give us a short field and we can score a lot of points. But I think the best thing that they do is obviously cause havoc.”

That’s something that Bowen has tried to instill . . . with a little help from his son’s T-ball team.

After citing the lack of takeaways as one of the biggest areas that needs improvement (the Giants had only 15 of them in 2024, 28th in the NFL, and only five interceptions), Bowen has put a “turnover chest” on the sideline at practices.

Now, whenever a player comes away with the football, he puts it in the pirate-like wooden receptacle. It was an inspiration to the young baseballers this spring on a team called, naturally, the Pirates.

“Somehow we got the idea of piracy, violent, attacking to steal possessions or goods, right?” Bowen said of bringing the T-ball gimmick to the NFL. “You’ll hear our guys say it and I say it ad nauseam: ‘Be a damn pirate!’ We got to find ways to get the ball. And again, you get what you emphasize. We’re making it a priority this year to make sure we find ways to get the ball.”

The Giants put three balls in the chest during Thursday’s OTA practice alone. With any luck, this year’s defense will be rated Arrrgh.

There are going to be other areas in which the Giants’ defense needs improvement. Bowen talked about eliminating explosive plays in the running game, staying out of third-and-shorts and several other statistical pitfalls that hurt last season’s team.

The Giants could have canned Bowen. Instead, they showered him with personnel that should make his defense much better.

“I’m excited about the additions, I am,” he said. “They’ve all come in here, they’re pros, they’re working hard. All the free agents we brought in, they’ve had a significant impact here early. You feel their leadership out there on the field, in the meeting room. And then of course the young guys we drafted, really excited about those guys as well.”

It just needs to be assembled.