CHARLOTTE — When you're as good at football as Julius Peppers was, people expect you to lead.

But if you're an introvert, or if you're young, or if you're surrounded by older players who are fine with all the attention, it's easier to fade into the background.

His talents never allowed that on the field, because Julius Peppers was easy to spot. His emergence as a leader, on the other hand, took time to develop.

Even the players he was closest to knew that they weren't going to hear much from him, but if he ever said anything, it probably mattered.

"The ultimate silent assassin," former running back and one of his closest friends during his time here, DeShaun Foster, said. "Pep didn't have much to say, but you knew he was always locked in, and he was going to show up on game day. It just happens with maturity; you just start leading differently.

"You can be a little bit more vocal once you put what you want to put on the field. Once he showed everybody the type of player he was, it was easy to lead and then you could be a little bit more vocal because you know guys are going to follow you."

The accomplishments were easy to see, so he was easy to follow.

Once he was ready to allow it.

Getting to know Peppers was a process, even for the players who were alongside him for years at a time.

Panthers general manager Dan Morgan was one of those guys, and he said he had what he considered a good relationship with Peppers. But he also can't recall many conversations outside of the locker room or practice field or game days.

"I'm not sure if we ever talked on the phone," Morgan said with a laugh. "I can't remember one time."

But at work, that didn't matter because the level of the work was so high. Being part of a defense with multiple Pro Bowlers and veterans such as Mike Rucker, Brenston Buckner, and Mike Minter allowed guys to ease into roles they'd take on later in their careers.

"I think that's why we were good: We were all in; we didn't need to talk," Morgan said. "Everybody led by example, like we would all run to the ball every practice. We were all finishing. There was no doubt in anybody's mind that people weren't going to finish the play.

"So I think the standards were set really high, to where like we didn't need to talk a lot. We all had respect for each other. We don't want to let each other down."

That part was definitely true, as the Panthers turned around the league's worst defense in 2001 to one of the best, fueling a Super Bowl run in 2003. And Peppers was a huge part of that.

But drawing Peppers out of his shell took time, and some getting used to.

Wide receiver Steve Smith found that out quickly. The chirpy little wide receiver stood next to Peppers in team pictures for years by virtue of being numbers 89 and 90, but Smith realized that it took much more than that to get close to Peppers.

"Pep is one of those guys, if you have a hard time with an awkward silence, he will test you unintentionally," Smith said. "My man can say nothing and be cool. Some people just can't handle silence, man. Pep will put you there.

"I mean, we stood next to each other for all those years, and I would talk or say something, but he just laughed or would not respond. That was his response."

Not everyone is wired that way. Many of his former teammates, including amateur comedians like Jordan Gross and Ryan Kalil, didn't know how to take it at first.

"I don't think he's like a boring person or not cerebral or anything like that, it's just that he held so true to that quiet nature," Gross said. "Guys like me can't understand that. Me and Kalil at a Wofford lunchroom table is heaven to me, just a bunch of people to flick stuff to and have fun and eat food. That's as good as it gets and that's terrifying to guys like him.

"There's nothing wrong with how he is, but he was like a mysterious little superhero that nobody really kind of knew. Hey, there he is. Is he going to sit down and talk to us today? And it's not an arrogance. It's just that he's such a private person and a quiet guy; it just made for a heck of a weird marriage with his ability on the field and who he was off of it."

At the same time, those who were around Peppers early in his career knew that he might avoid a casual interaction, but wasn't afraid of a deeper one. Dan Henning, who was the offensive coordinator when Peppers was a rookie, was one of the best-read coaches in the league. And the respect he had for Peppers' curiosity was immediate.

"You would never know that about Julius because he would never tell you that," Henning said. "But you found out after you had conversations with him. He could converse on a number of different areas and make you enjoy a 30-minute conversation. I can tell you that."

Thirty-minute conversations aren't hard for Henning. Peppers, less so.

He guarded his privacy fiercely. When he left the Panthers in 2010 for Chicago, there was an element of getting away from the fishbowl he had lived his life in to that point — a North Carolina kid who grew up in Bailey, grew into a two-sport star in Chapel Hill, and became an NFL legend in Charlotte.

But there were times when he would speak, and those became meaningful.

Former Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme said he got used to not hearing from Peppers for long stretches of time. And he admitted surprise when he woke up to an unexpected text from his former teammate when he was about to make a start for the Browns in 2010.

"We were in Tampa, and I had a text; I was already sleeping, and it was a text from Julius, and it was like, 'Hey, I'm just telling you, I'm pulling so much for you tomorrow. I loved playing with you. You should never have left, go kick ass.' That floored me, but that was Julius. When you thought someone was just so quiet, or you didn't know what he was thinking, he was thinking and processing all the time, right?"

He just wasn't always expressing those thoughts in public.

Players and coaches recalled the awkwardness when Rucker retired and owner Jerry Richardson challenged Peppers to take on his leadership role at the press conference, something Peppers wasn't expecting and didn't appear thrilled with.

But they also remember those little moments, like the text Delhomme got, where Peppers could get your attention.

Rucker admitted being surprised at times when he sees his former teammate chime in on social media, laughing and saying it was like the days at a time he'd go without hearing from the guy at the locker next to his.

"I think he'll continue to embrace this leadership role," Rucker said. "I think we've seen certain issues, right? Panthers issues, social issues every now and then, you'll see a tweet that you would never have seen before out of Julius, right? He takes a stance on certain things. You would have never have seen that out of Julius then.

"And I think as he starts to figure out what the next chapter is for him, I think we'll see more of that leadership type of insertion out of Julius, right? Where he's been a little bit more open."

Wide receiver Muhsin Muhammad told Peppers as much, having been around Peppers in the context of teammates at first, then Hall of Honor classmates, giving them a chance to see the arc of a personality develop. Muhammad was a husband and father with a young family in the early 2000s and joked that he wasn't going out with Peppers and former Bobcats co-owner Nelly during those early years (Peppers was featured in the "Hot in Here" video because of course he was).

"I told him, I said, 'Man, I'm proud of how you've grown in that way,'" Muhammad said. "Because the other stuff is easy for him. This stuff is a challenge for you because he just wasn't a part of who you were when you were around there for those first three years.

"I knew what I saw in the locker room when I came to work. I knew what he was as a teammate. I knew him well enough to know what kind of character he brought to the team every day."

But then, Peppers was still processing what it meant to be a star, and what it meant to lead.

It came easier as he aged. That was far more evident during his second stint with the Panthers when he came back with flecks of gray in his beard — earned wisdom that he was more willing to share.

Linebacker Luke Kuechly was an established star in his own right by that point, but he remembers with something approaching giddiness his first real conversations with Peppers.

His teammate Thomas Davis had told him that Peppers was considering coming back to his original team well before it happened, and Kuechly wasn't quite sure how to talk to a living legend.

"I FaceTimed him with TD a few times, and then when he came in the locker room the first time, it's like, it's like when you meet Steve," Kuechly said. "When I was growing up, that's when he had the triple crown (in 2005), so when I met Steve, I was like, wait, whoa. And Pep was like that same kind of way where it was just his size and his presence.

"But the first thing you always see with Pep is that smile, that big Pep smile and it puts you at ease. But Pep was different because his size and presence was just so much different than anybody that I ever played with. He played football the right way. He's always treated people the right way. He treats young guys awesome. I just think people have a ton of respect for how he played the game. He is just such a unique player but also a great person, right?"

No one disputes that part. But they also know that sticking a camera in his face or asking him to speak wasn't something he felt comfortable with.

When he was playing here the first time through, sometimes he was forced to talk since former head coach John Fox would have players address the team at the end of the week. You never knew what you were going to get.

But when it was Peppers' turn, there was a notable anticipation.

"When he would talk though, you're almost building it up," Gross said with a laugh. "Like it was going be like Gandalf the Gray was going to deliver some amazing, 'oh-my-god-I've-never-heard-such-words' kind of speech. He's finally spoken. It's not Moses. It's just a quiet guy with some good perspective.

"I don't remember ever seeing him have like an emotional delivery or anything. I don't think he was Hall of Fame in speech giving. I wasn't expecting Gandalf the Gray and you get all the wizardry and puffs of wind and the staff would start glowing. None of that was going on.

"It was just Pep. And it was great."

At the same time, there was a weight to his words, which may have been heightened by the economy.

And that got everyone on the edges of their seats when it was Julius Peppers' turn.

"He's so much more than people thought; he was quiet, he was shy," Delhomme said. "When I tell you, everybody couldn't wait, you couldn't wait for a couple of speeches. One was John Kasay because he's a gifted speaker, and he was just fabulous. But two was Julius because you just wanted to peek a little deeper inside of who he was because he was revered. And it was that we just wanted more. I think we were all dying for more.

"I think we're just wondering, who exactly is he? And then you hear him talk, and you're like, you know what? He's a lot deeper than we thought. He wasn't just a freak athlete who played ball and did other things on the side. He was a whole lot more thoughtful, a lot deeper thinker than you thought. Because you just look at this Greek god, and you just think, yeah, he was made just to play football because he was built like that.

"But he had so much more. He was so much more than just a football player, but we didn't get enough of it there. That's the thing we never got. It's like that little window: the shades were barely ever let up. We just wanted more."