The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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18 THE WOLVERINE DECEMBER 2016 BY JOHN BORTON F rankly, he hates talking about it all. Jabrill Peppers would rather face a sea of scarlet and gray tacklers than an oncom- ing wave of red-lighted cameras and gray-hair-spouting questions. Michigan's redshirt sophomore Swiss Army Knife — "linebacker" un- dersells him like calling Thomas Edi- son a telegraph operator — enjoyed the attention as a prep All-American at Paramus (N.J.) Catholic. It was new and fun. Now, everybody wants a piece of Peppers, and not just the defenses that go into five-alarm fire mode when he lines up at quarterback. So he keeps his head down as best possible — talking when he has to. "I try to lay low," he said. "I just want to play football. All these cam- eras and stuff … you probably have to ask somebody else. I'm in class; I'm in my house. "I don't wear anything football re- lated. I try to keep the hat on, head- phones on, do what I've got to do. Stay grounded. Don't get too low; don't get too high." The latter might be tough some- times. When you're getting mentioned in the Heisman Trophy conversation, receiving messages of encouragement from Charles Woodson and serving as the central figure on a team in the hunt for the College Football Playoff, it's hard to duck the spotlight. There are times, of course, Peppers embraces it. When he scooped up a fumble on a two-point conversion try and bolted away 85-plus yards before a dumbstruck crowd at Spartan Sta- dium this season, he clearly embraced the limelight. "I thought I heard a sonic boom on that two-point conversion," Jim Har- baugh said, regarding the signature moment in the Spartan slap-down. "I've seen it at practice so many times — whoa, that is so fast. Someday, he'll go to the NFL Combine and run a 40 time, and it will be so interesting to see what he runs. That's going to be in the 4.3s somewhere … "I was a little disappointed para- chutes didn't come out. It just looked like what was going to happen." Peppers' speed served him — and the Wolverines — well a game ear- lier, when he executed a 50-yard sprint to chase down Illini running back Ke'Shawn Vaughn on a breakout run. Peppers tracked him like a cheetah hauling down an antelope, prevent- ing a long touchdown and ultimately keeping Illinois off the scoreboard. "It's a huge play by our No. 5," de- fensive coordinator Don Brown said. "He's coming from the back side, so that's all effort and energy to get there … it was a great job on his part." When Peppers grows hotter than a Habanero on the football field, he's in a world he can completely control — competitive, fierce and measured by a bare-knuckled bottom line. Question how Michigan's defense might hold up, and the competitor emerges. "We know what kind of defense we are," he said. "We don't need anybody to tell us. We believe we have the best defense in the country, regardless of what anybody says. If anybody feels differently, just put the ball down. Let's play 60 minutes of football." There it is. Peppers would rather play the game than talk about it, but he handles both without backing away. "We've got guys that are competi- tive," secondary coach Mike Zordich stressed. "Certainly, Pep is very com- petitive. I'm not taking anything away from Pep. His ability, his leadership and his work ethic, they all see it. Ev- erybody sees it. They all rub off on each other." BROTHER FORESEES SUCCESS Peppers didn't experience an easy road to The Big House and the big spotlight. His father was imprisoned when he was only seven, and their contact since involved only phone calls. The third-year Wolverines' brother, Don Curtis, was shot and killed in a Chinese restaurant seven years later. Curtis warned Peppers to stay away from the sort of life that eventually ended his own. He also proved pro- phetic, regarding the teenager's ath- letic giftedness. "He was the one who called it," Pep- pers said. "I can hear him now, saying: 'I told you, Little Bro. Just stick to the plan.'" At age 9, Peppers felt lost in the shuffle during the pickup games with an older mix of relatives. But Curtis watched closely and encouraged him. Peppers recalled: "He said, 'Little Bro, you've got a gift. If anybody could make it, it's you.' He would tell me, and I was just like, 'Yeah, whatever.' I was the youngest out of all my cousins and my brothers. The youngest always gets picked on the most. "When I finally got a chance to play with people my age, it was easy. It just felt natural." It felt natural in high school, where Peppers became a four-time state champion, two seasons at Don Bosco Preparatory High School and two more at Paramus. It also felt natural for Peppers to head to Ann Arbor as the No. 3 prep player in the nation, al- though Michigan hadn't won a cham- pionship since Peppers began assert- ing himself in the backyard games. When Jim Harbaugh and his staff came on board, everything clicked. Peppers' all-around talent, his intelli- gence and ability to learn quickly, and a competitive intensity that fell right in line with Harbaugh's, opened a world of possibilities. Since then, he's done it all — de- fense, offense, special teams. He con- tinues to want more, and his coaches are all too willing to oblige. "When you have a young man like that who can take on more, you just continue to push," explained Chris Partridge, Peppers' head coach at Paramus, who now directs Michigan's linebackers and special teams. "That's who he is. That's what he thrives off of. If you limit him, you're limiting who he is as a person." Partridge loves Peppers' approach. The coach observed one rare practice After 10 games, Peppers ranks second on the team with 638 all-purpose yards, while his 26 points scored rank seventh. PHOTO BY PER KJELDSEN CAYENNE CRUSADER Jabrill Peppers Heats Up As The Season Winds Down