Tempers flared in the third quarter of Sunday's game between the Carolina Panthers and Tampa Buccaneers as Brian Burns was shoved followed a point after attempt and responded by throwing a punch at Bucs offensive lineman, Cody Mauch.
"I want to apologize to my team, my family, for conducting myself that way," Burns said in postgame. "Never been ejected from a game, especially for doing something like that. Emotions got the best of me. One of the offensive linemen said something in the beginning that he shouldn't have said to me and Marquis (Haynes Sr.) and ever since then I was pretty much on ten. I was mad. Some events happened, we got scored on. The game wasn't going our way initially. It wasn't even my fight I just got pushed and I turned around and reacted. I take full accountability for my actions. I can't do that."
In a video posted by Aileen Hnatiuk of NBC (Tampa affiliate), Mauch was asked if he's ever been involved in a situation like that and explained his side of the story.
"Nothing like that, no. I mean, you talk a little bit to each other but no, nothing like that. That was a new experience, but it was fun. I liked it. He had been talking a bunch which it happens and you're kind of in the pile and you don't know what's going to happen so you try to push him out of the pile a little bit and I guess I was just a guy he retaliated against."
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