NFL’s longest-tenured defensive players meet Sunday. How can they still be around?

Seventeen years ago, while Arizona State’s football team trained in a makeshift weight room, recently hired head strength and conditioning coach Joe Kenn sought out one player in particular.

With 12 wins and 12 losses over its previous two seasons, the Sun Devils program was, by definition, average. The player Kenn pulled aside that day was anything but.

Kenn isn’t sure if Terrell Suggs remembers it, but in that introductory conversation, he let the then-sophomore know what his ceiling was if he truly bought in.

“If you just do what I think you can do and what I ask,” Kenn told him, “I think you can have a 20-sack year.’”

Suggs broke an NCAA record with 24 sacks the following season, launching him into a 16-year NFL career — all with the Baltimore Ravens.

And he’s not done yet.

Football is supposed to be a young man’s game, with the average career spanning roughly three years. But when the Ravens come to Charlotte on Sunday to play the Carolina Panthers, the three defensive players with the longest active tenure in the NFL will be on the field: Suggs (16th season) and Carolina Panthers Julius Peppers (17th) and Mike Adams (15th).

Kenn, now the Panthers’ strength and conditioning coach, worked with all three at different stages of their careers. He said the three players share a common trait — desire.

“The simple thing with longevity with these guys, especially at this level, is want-to. You’ve got to want to play,” Kenn said. “You’re not just going to show up and say, ‘I’m just going to ride out another year.’ That doesn’t happen in the NFL. They don’t allow it to happen.

“So if you have the want-to and the skill set that continues to make plays, then you’re going to be around as long as you want to.

“Very few guys in the NFL get to make their own calls. When you’re playing in the years that these guys are playing in, they’ve put themselves in a position where possibly they can make their own call when it’s time to call it quits.”

Rare form

Kenn saw the desire in Suggs, now 36, from their first meeting back in 2001. He called the Chandler, Ariz. product the second-best practice player he’s ever been around.

The best? Former Panthers wide receiver Steve Smith, whom Kenn coached at the collegiate and professional levels.

“Those guys love to ball. When you love ball and you’re very good at it, it makes things a lot easier for you compared to the rest,” he said. “From Terrell’s standpoint, all his success in the NFL does not surprise me at all. I always thought he would dominate the NFL because of just the way he was.”

While Suggs broke records on one end of the country in 2002, Peppers earned the NFL’s Defensive Rookie of the Year award on the other. The Panthers legend has outlasted six of the next seven players to win it after him.

The only one of the group still playing? Suggs, who won it in 2003.

Peppers and Suggs haven’t slowed down much.

They combined for 22 sacks in 2017, each finishing just outside the top 10 in the individual rankings.

“It’s so rare ... Those kind of guys are just on a different level athletically,” Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. “There aren’t very many of those types of human beings walking around on the planet. Start with that, then I think the work ethic. You have to work at a really high level to be able to play at a high level at that age. And then also, the football IQ. The intelligence, the professionalism, all those things have to go into it.”

Their professional careers are comparable. Peppers has nine Pro Bowls to Suggs’ seven and four All-Pro selections to Suggs’ two, although Suggs is the only one of the two to win a Super Bowl and Defensive Player of the Year.

Peppers (156.5) leads all active players in career sacks, and Suggs (131) is on pace for the second-best two-year sack total of his career.

But Suggs can’t match the former Tar Heel’s basketball career.

“I’ve always looked up to ‘Pep,’” Suggs told Baltimore reporters. “He came out of North Carolina and was a two-sport player. I wasn’t fortunate enough to have that kind of ability to play two sports in college.

“He’s the active sacks leader. So definitely, when he’s on the field, I’m going to be watching him play. I definitely admire him. He’s a great player, and he’s one of those rare forms you don’t get to see often in this league.”

Constant communication

Peppers is an impressive figure at 6-foot-7, 295 pounds. Even more impressive is how his body has held up during his 17-year career.

He has played an astounding 256 of 262 possible regular-season games, missing two in 2007 with a sprained MCL and four as a rookie in 2002 to an NFL-enforced suspension. It’s because of that mileage on Peppers’ body that the Panthers have to be smart with how much they put on him during the week.

“The No. 1 objective is Sunday,” Kenn said. “The last thing I want to do is when Julius is in a rest day from the field on Wednesdays, and he’s with me doing metabolic work in the weight room, is to not use that as also getting him prepped for Sunday, without the demands of being out in a padded practice.”

While Kenn said the team doesn’t want to push Peppers, 38, too hard, it’s part of his job to keep Peppers’ body prepared for a full workload later in the week.

But ultimately, Kenn’s most important duty is to listen to the players — especially the ones whose career has lasted more than five times the league’s average.

“Those guys have been around long enough that you’ll learn from them if you’re smart enough to listen,” he said. “You learn (because) they learn more and more about what they need at what points of time in the year.”

Players such as Peppers (who has never lost time to a major injury), Suggs (who has twice returned from a torn Achilles tendon) and Panthers linebacker Thomas Davis (who has returned from a torn ACL three times) have little to prove at this stage.

But there are a few remaining boxes that could be checked. A Super Bowl for Peppers and Davis, or the all-time sack record for Peppers or Suggs. Kenn says most players aren’t in it for the accolades, especially not the guys who’ve spent more than a decade in the NFL.

There is something that motivates them to push through injuries, spend precious time away from their families and strap up every Sunday when, on paper, there isn’t much left to accomplish.

It’s love.

“That’s what’s impressive about guys that can play this long,” Panthers coach Ron Rivera said. “They have that same passion, that same fire in their belly to step up and play every time — and to play at a high level and be very, very effective. Those guys are impressive.”

Kenn agrees.

“There has to be some type of love for that, also. Because if you don’t love it — this is a different job,” he said. “You hear it all the time in business, ‘oh I don’t love my job.’ You’ve got to have some sort of love for this job to be in it as long as these guys have been.”

No luxuries

Peppers and Suggs were first-round picks in 2002 and 2003, respectively, and have each received the attention that comes with that ever since. As Sunday’s matchup approaches, reporters’ questions during the week centered around the two All-Pros.

But Mike Adams’ 15-year career is perhaps the more improbable.

In a league that welcomes some of the best athletes in the world every year at his position, the undrafted safety out of Delaware has carved a career that’s spanned three presidents, five teams and 212 games. One reason? He embraces a professional athlete’s most prevalent reality — there are no days off.

“The biggest thing you’re going to learn is the guys who last the longest are the guys who commit to the 365,” Kenn said. “You can’t just miss out and say, ‘oh, I don’t have to be back until April? I’m going to start working out the week I’ve got to be back,’ or, ‘I’ve got six weeks off until training camp, I’m going to take three of those and go on vacation.’ Those guys don’t last. You’ve got to be a pro 365 days a year, and the guys who last are the guys who understand how to be a pro 365 days a year.

“Mike’s a 365-day-a-year guy.”

If you ask Adams, 37, he’ll tell you he didn’t have a choice but to work hard. Every day. Who’s taking a chance on an undrafted, Football Championship Subdivision safety who doesn’t?

Without the safety net of being a high draft pick, he turned his curse into his blessing. With no room for complacency, it was either keep climbing or fall.

That work ethic remains the foundation of his career. As it turned out, going undrafted was a luxury in its own right.

“Just being undrafted. Small school, I didn’t have the opportunities everybody else had,” he said. “I wasn’t drafted so, you know, you always get the bottom portion of things. You don’t get the luxury of a second chance. That’s what keeps me grinding, 365.

“That was always embedded in me, man. That was just me. I just wanted it more. I always say I wasn’t the biggest, I wasn’t the fastest. I just wanted it more.”

Fifteen years in the NFL isn’t for everyone, and is by no means the standard for a successful career.

For those who want it, though, Peppers, Suggs and Adams are still-shining examples of how to do it.

“That’s the thing about NFL guys, they know what they have to get accomplished when they’re not here,” Kenn said. “And that’s the key. The guys who don’t figure that out are the guys who usually don’t last.”