When you deliver a 10.5-sack season at age 35, the hyperbole tends to come out. But when you've been delivering those kinds of seasons for 14 years, it begins to sound not so much like hyperbole as truth.
"Julius Peppers is ageless," Packers head coach Mike McCarthy said, per PackersNews.com.
Maybe he really is.
Peppers is a nine-time Pro Bowler and three-time first-team All-Pro. He made six of those Pro Bowls and all three All-Pro teams by the time he was 29, and did it all with the Carolina Panthers. In the eight seasons he spent in Carolina, Peppers collected 81 sacks. Per Pro-Football-Reference, that ties for the 13th-most through age 29, and it's already enough to place in the top-60 all-time, period.
In the six seasons he's played since he turned 30, Peppers has kept right on sacking the quarterback. He's racked up 55 sacks in those six years, and he's done it while transitioning from 4-3 defensive end to 3-4 outside linebacker for the last two of those seasons -- seasons in which he totaled 17.5 sacks. Only 11 players have ever collected more between ages 30 and 35.
Peppers has also done all this while not missing a single game since 2007, and the two he missed that season are the only two he's sat out since he was a rookie. He's remarkable.
How does he do it?
Well, Peppers told PackersNews.com that he shortened his offseason break from two or three months to one month as he got older. He also runs wind sprints against defensive backs during the offseason, something he's done his entire career.
"I've been doing that since college," Peppers said. "I like to run. That's my thing. I like to run in the offseason. So I have a chance to get with those little guys and try to push myself and use one of those guys as a rabbit. I try to jump in there with them and see if I can keep up."
And although he doesn't have too strict a diet, he does watch what he eats. There's no fast food in there, for example. Oh, and he's always asleep by around 9 o'clock -- 10 o'clock at the latest.
Entering his age-36 season, Peppers is at 136 career sacks. To hit 150 (a number at which every player is in the Hall of Fame), he'll have to collect at least 14 over the rest of his career. If he did, that'd be the seventh-most all-time after a player turned 36 years old. Only 13 guys have double-digit total sacks after that age, with Bruce Smith's 36 being the most.
| Rank | Player | Sacks |
| 1 | Bruce Smith | 36 |
| 2 | Chris Doleman | 35 |
| 3 | Reggie White | 32.5 |
| 4 | Kevin Greene | 27 |
| 5 | Clay Matthews | 22 |
| 6 | Too Tall Jones | 18 |
| 7 | Rickey Jackson | 13 |
| 8 | Jason Taylor | 12 |
| 9 | Richard Dent | 11 |
| 10 | Carl Hairston | 10.5 |
| 11 | James Harrison | 10.5 |
| 12 | Dave Butz | 10 |
| 13 | Sam Mills | 10 |
If Peppers' play last year is any indication, he'll soon join that list. He looked like he had at least a couple years left. But all it takes is one down season for teams to think a guy that age is done, so he'll have to keep it up if he wants to get there.
