CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ 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."
