Will Meeks Use Peppers differently?

Now that we know Peppers is going to be here next season I wonder what will happen? Will Meeks use him differently than we have in the past? Will dropping him into coverage become stop or be diminished? Meeks had Freeney and got a lot out of him, will he be able to get the most from Peppers?

For what we are paying him I hope he finally lives up to his massive potential.

 

The zone blitz is a thing of the past in Charlotte. Peppers will be allowed to pin his ears back and go this year. So yeah, it will be different.

 

I hope that is correct.

 

Fox will still be influencing the scheme, keep that in mind.

 

You sound like you are talking about Stanley McClover. Peppers has been one of the best DE's in the league and made numerous Pro Bowls since he was drafted. Yeah 2007 sucked a big fat one but other than that he's been "living up to his potential".


As far as less zone blitz and using him different. That wouldn't hurt my feelings at all, we dropped him into coverage too many times on obvious passing downs. Sure it was cute and might work once in a 100 but it was frustrating watching it. Thats why I can't wrap my mind around him saying he wants to play LB in a 3-4. He'd be doing that more often. It'd be nice if he got into camp and realized he was liking what we will be trying to do on D this year and ends up signing long term and all the bullshit about the 3-4 was just smoke and mirrors.

 

Zone blitz is probably gone. A lot of other blitzing is probably done too - Fox wasn't a blitzer. JDR really wasn't a blitzer. C2 isn't much of a blitzing scheme, though it does lend itself (with two deep and 5 under, there's a lot of room to go into man or simply put fewer guys in short zones).

So, suddenly we have more pressure in theory, which is good, and the scheme is more about fundamentals and technique than it is fooling people (which we really need in the back half right about now, too). But if we don't have enough pressure, we don't have enough pressure. If people start griping about blitzing more, tough.


Will Peppers still face doubleteams? Yes. Will he still have to face the run? OF course. He might get a more broad shot at taking an outside approach, but will he be used vastly different? No. There isn't a scheme around that won't want Peppers to line up at one spot and attempt to dominate.

 

Sack totals and probowls aside he has never been the second coming of Reggie White or Bruce Smith that he could be. He usually has two or three awesome games where he pads his stats and then is pretty average the rest of the time. Those awesome games usually come against a crappy offense like last year's Oakland team.

I could care less if he gets 14 sacks again, I want consistent pressure from him, I want him to dominate when he is facing a lesser player. Seems like every time he faces some back up tackle and you think he should eat the QB for lunch he gets shut down.

 

I wonder how many average guys register sacks against the league's #2, 5, and 11 offenses ranked in sacks allowed.

 

If you only compare the first 7 years of their careers (which is all Peppers has played), you might notice JP is close to Smith in sacks & both JP and Smith are WAY behind Reggie in sacks. Pep blows them away in PDs, ints, and FFs. You seem to have a problem with how he was used which is on the staff. Trading him away or letting him walk won't fix that.

 

Good points and neither of those players were used the same way Peppers has been here at Carolina, and the PDs and Ints numbers support that. White was a pin your ears back and rush the passer type player his entire career while Peppers was used a lot to do stupid shit that he could do and be somewhat successful every now and again.