Carolina Panthers Icon Julius Peppers Comes Back Home as 2025 Season Approaches

The Carolina Panthers will honor NFL great Julius Peppers before their 2025 opener. His stats tell a stunning story: 159.5 sacks and 719 tackles across 266 games in the league.

Picked second in 2002, he burst onto the NFL scene. His first year brought 12 sacks and the top rookie award on defense.

Born in North Carolina, he spent his first eight years with the Panthers. Those seasons saw him crush quarterbacks 81 times and make five trips to the Pro Bowl. His skills stayed sharp when he switched teams, adding four more Pro Bowl picks with the Bears and Packers.

In Chicago, he kept his fierce pace. Three Pro Bowls in four years proved his worth. Then came Green Bay, where at 35, he still dropped quarterbacks 10.5 times in 2015, earning yet another Pro Bowl spot.

When he came back to Carolina in 2017, age seemed just a number. At 37, he took down quarterbacks 11 times. His team went 11-5 that year and made the playoffs. Even in his last NFL run, he added five more sacks.

"You can travel the world, but there's no place like home. So, thank you for having my back since the day I was drafted and for always showing me love," said Peppers to Cats Scratch Reader.

2024 brought twin peaks for the pass rush master. The NFL Hall of Fame gave him his gold jacket, while Carolina put him in their Ring of Excellence. His 159.5 career sacks rank fourth in NFL records.

No Panther wears number 90 now: a sign of what he meant to the team. His NFL path spanned 17 years, with 10 in Carolina split across two stints.