Trade him and rebuild the defense
By Tom Sorensen
tsorensen@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Sunday, Jan. 18, 2009
The idea of Julius Peppers tearing into the Carolina backfield, sacking Jake Delhomme, stuffing DeAngelo Williams and creating fumbles is scary.
The idea of Peppers playing for the Panthers, a team he no longer wants to be part of, is scarier. Anybody who has aimed binoculars at Julius for consecutive series knows he takes plays off. If he's a Panther only because he has to be, what's he going to take off next – halves?
Carolina doesn't have many options on this one. The Panthers should apply the franchise tag to Peppers and then trade him. The Kansas City Chiefs collected three draft picks last April for their great pass rusher, Jared Allen. Minnesota gave up a first-rounder (17 {+t}{+h} overall) and two third-rounders (73 and 82).
And Allen was tainted. He was charged three times with driving under the influence, the last of which cost him a two-game suspension. Plus, he wore a mullet.
I wrote four months ago that the Panthers had offered Peppers an enormous contract before the season.
Peppers never acknowledged it.
We learned why late Friday when his agent, Carl Carey, sent a statement to ESPN. In it, Peppers said he “wants to explore opportunities with other NFL teams.”
Breaking the news on ESPN tells you everything you need to know. As rare as Peppers is on the field, occasionally making plays nobody else can, he tries to be one of the many away from it.
I ran into him at a Charlotte steak restaurant one night eating dinner at the bar. He rarely looked up and his cap was pulled low on his head. So successful was his quest for anonymity that if he weren't 6-foot-7 and 283 pounds and didn't have one of North Carolina's most famous faces attached to the front of his head, I might not have recognized him.
Releasing the story to a national news outlet was like yanking off the cap, jumping on the bar and shouting, “I don't want to be a Panther, anymore!”
For the Panthers, the off season takes a new shape. Offensive tackle Jordan Gross is as good at his job as Peppers is at his, and since the Panthers can't apply the franchise tag to two players, they must sign him. The draft picks Peppers would fetch, meanwhile, could be devoted to a defense that went bad long before Jake Delhomme did.
The breakup won't be easy because we will never see a player such as Peppers come our way again. The only people with his size and athleticism work in the NBA. If you identified the 25 most impressive defensive plays in Panthers history, I bet Peppers made 15 of them.
But he is a better athlete than he is a player. As big as he is, he sometimes disappears, as the Arizona Cardinals will attest. With him, you don't get an every-down player. You get a player who, every other down or every other quarter or every other game, is spectacularly disruptive.
Peppers implies he never reached his potential during his seven seasons here. I disagree. We've seen everything he can do.
We've also seen everything he can't.
http://www.charlotte...ory/480372.html
OUCH..... :ciappa:
