2024 Hall of Fame: Julius Peppers’ incredible athleticism helped make him an all-time great

Seven men will be formally enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday in Canton, Ohio. Yahoo Sports will take a relatively short look at each legend and how he reached football immortality.

Patrick Willis | Steve McMichael | Randy Gradishar | Dwight Freeney | Andre Johnson | Devin Hester

Fans tuning into a Final Four men’s basketball game in April of 2000 saw a muscular freshman lead North Carolina with 16 minutes off the bench. They might have remembered him from earlier in the NCAA tournament, scoring six points with three blocks in an upset over top-seeded Stanford, or putting up six points, eight rebounds, two assists and two steals in a regional final win against Tulsa.

Julius Peppers was a pretty good basketball player for a future Pro Football Hall of Famer.

Not many NFL defensive ends can say they started games for one of the most famed programs in men’s college basketball history — Peppers started three games in his final UNC hoops season as a sophomore, including a 21-point game in the NCAA tournament against Penn State— but Peppers was a special athlete.

On This Day in Carolina Dunk History (3/1/2000)

On his Senior Night, Ed Cota picked off a pass then found Julius Peppers filling the lane like a freight train for the monster tomahawk over Alvin Jones. pic.twitter.com/sY6DkrhuVc

— Carolina Classics Club (@UNC_Dunks) March 1, 2021

Peppers was the second pick of the Carolina Panthers in the 2002 NFL Draft and played 17 NFL seasons. He was good enough that his first double-digit sack season came at age 22 and his final one happened at age 37.

He could probably still come off the bench and grab a couple rebounds, too.

Julius Peppers had a storied career

If you were creating a defensive end in a video game, you could do worse than copying Peppers’ attributes.

Peppers was 6-foot-7, 295 pounds with freakish athleticism. He held on to that athleticism into his late 30s too. That helped Peppers be a part of two Hall of Fame all-decade teams, making the…

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-08-02 13:00:04

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