Replacing Peppers production....

[Jangler]

whatever, pep was the man when he wore a Panthers jersey. you people dissing on him are just jealous cause he makes millions of dollars. he's a beast, hands down. as far as his future in chicago, still remains to be seen. but when he was here, teams feared him. who cares about the plays he took off, ask Sean Peyton, or Gruden or whoever coached the falcons... ask them if they loved scheming against Peppers because he took plays off.

f*ckin' idiots.

Really? Money? Players have made a lot of money for a long time in sports. I don't think it's jealousy. But that's what defenders do...make it about something else.

[NJPanthers12]

jangler go read my last post in the other thread and please answer me that

[Davidson Deac II]

Peppers was great, no doubt about it. But he was still just one guy, and on a 11 man unit, one guy is not irreplaceable. If we were only losing peppers from last year, I would not be all that concerned. What concerns me this year is that we are replacing more than one guy. Thats going to be a lot for the defense to overcome, which is why I believe we will struggle early in the year.

[mountainpantherfan]

The issue at hand isn't replacing Pepper's production. His production (stats) was never as important as the threat of what his production could have been. Even in a down year like the 07 season, a lack of sacks didn't deter coaches from game planning around him. Not to mention that a lot of his production recently came in spurts and many times in meaningless situations.

Fox is completely correct when saying that you can not replace Peppers but I don't feel he was refering to a production viewpoint. Peppers mear presence garnnered the attention of opposing coaches and the double team, clips and isolating blocking from opposing players.

However, this also changes the way that the Panthers coaches approach gameplanning as well. And I feel we already started seeing some of this last season with Meeks taking over the defense. Del Rio and Trgo both seemed to try and gameplan their defenses in a way that tried to get Peppers in prosition to make plays. We saw this a lot in 08 when Peppers was constantly moving around the line, even playing DT at times. It's much in line with the concept that Henning had towards Smith; Feed the Star.

Now, with Meeks as the DC, the defense in general is more of a opportunistic defense with no one player having the defense "run" through them. Defenses in the past, under Fox, have been charaterised as being "bend but don't break" but this really isn't as truthful as concieved. Fox has long held a belief of will power. Man on man, every player has to beat his opposing player and the results fall where they land. This is one reason so many times half time adjustments don't seem present on the field.

Meeks, however, does not seem to follow the "man on man" concept but rather uses a unit concept where all 11 defeners are collectively playing as one. It focuses on speed, awareness and teamwork rather than just brute force. Individual production, victories or stats are non-important. The key to this defense being succesful isn't depentant on replacing the production of Peppers adsense but rather the entire unit as one being productive. In theroy...

[The Don]

The issue at hand isn't replacing Pepper's production. His production (stats) was never as important as the threat of what his production could have been. Even in a down year like the 07 season, a lack of sacks didn't deter coaches from game planning around him. Not to mention that a lot of his production recently came in spurts and many times in meaningless situations.....

Some serious spelling errors there, but nonetheless... well said. Peppers isn't our entire defense, and yes we lost Diggs to FA, Harris in a trade, and Davis obviously because of his injury. All three of which I believe have been replaced by talented players (Beason will be a beast anywhere on the field, Connor will fill in nicely at MLB with Anderson in Diggs' old position and Martin should be an improvement over Harris, especially in the pass coverage department). Then up front, I expect our D-Line to be top notch after three or four games, barring no injuries of course (knock on wood). In interviews conducted this offseason, you've heard Charles Johnson and Everette Brown welcome the task of stepping up for the recently departed Julius Peppers. They all probably thought Peppers was the star of the defensive line, yet now that he's gone, this is their opportunity to replace his name with theirs. I expect them to all work hard and diligent towards rushing the passer and stuffing the run.

[Argus Plexus]

Some serious spelling errors there

There wasn't a single spelling error in that entire paragraph...only a few in the whole post.