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Although he was still the team’s running back it just made sense to give the burgeoning number of recruiters a thorough look at a potential college superstar defensive end. By his senior year, Peppers played every down on defense. As his stamina improved, the big guy played more and more defense.

Davis experimented with playing Peppers at defensive end. Southern Nash, like many high schools, makes use of two way players. “I want to touch the ball, have fun,” he told me. Yet he believed that for Southern Nash, using Peppers primarily as a ball carrier, helped the team more than putting him somewhere else.Īs for Julius, I asked him why he chose running back. Ray Davis understood that ultimately Peppers would be playing against men more his own size in college and beyond, and that that might warrant a position change. Think of Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians in Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels.” He also had the strength to drag smaller tacklers for extra yards, often many extra yards. He ran a 4.6 40 yard dash, which gave him the speed to get around those players big enough to tackle him-and there weren’t many. But his prowess was about more than size. Peppers stood 6’7 and weighed 250 pounds. But as Davis later told me, “Julius makes Abe look like a little baby.” Indeed. In the early Nineties the Firebirds unleashed the 6’4 240 pound Abe Jones on opposing defenses. Now Southern Nash has some tradition playing big running backs. Perhaps as part of the enticement to get him on the gridiron, Davis allowed Peppers to play any position he wanted. Julius joined the Firebird football squad in the fall of 1995. Legend has it Davis promised Peppers he could be a Hall of Famer if he worked hard. Davis told Peppers he needed to come out for football the next fall. Mack Brown, Julius Peppers among NC Sports Hall of Fame 2020 classĭavis one day watched Peppers practicing the triple jump-he fashioned a distance of 37 feet even as a freshman.