4. Burns has been raising his brothers since 2015
Burns has stepped up when it comes to raising his two teenage brothers, Thomas and Jordan, after his mother died of a heart attack in 2015. Their father, who has been gone since 2006, has been serving a 25-year sentence in South Carolina for trafficking cocaine.
So Burns had to grow up pretty fast after he had just turned 21. During his senior year at Miami, Burns was raising two teenage boys and his own 19-month-old baby, A.J. It’s that kind of responsibility that led to Burns winning the Steelers’ Ed Block Courage Award back in 2017.
“This is a [24-year-old] guy who’s parenting teenagers,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said in 2017. “I have teenagers. I’m (47). We share conversation about the parenting of these teenagers. This is a guy who embraces this responsibility.”
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