7 players who finished their career back where it started
Defensive end Julius Peppers will rejoin the Carolina Panthers after spending seven seasons away from the team in Chicago and Green Bay.
Peppers, 37, made 81 sacks as a Panther from 2002-09 and remains the team's all-time leader in sacks. He probably doesn't have a lot left in the tank, but the Panthers are betting he can recapture some of the magic of old and contribute to their deficient pass rush.
Here are six other players who returned home to finish their career after leaving the nest:
Charles Woodson
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Woodson spent 11 seasons with the Raiders, a longer career than most NFL players can claim. Incredibly, though, he also spent seven seasons with the Packers in the middle of it.
Woodson was 36 years old when he began his second stint with the Raiders in 2013. They gave him only a one-year deal, but he proved so effective at his advanced age that he stuck around for two more. Woodson retired after the 2015 season at age 39, but it's hard not to think he could have kept playing indefinitely.
Boomer Esiason
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Esiason spent nine seasons with the Bengals, leading the team to a Super Bowl appearance, before getting traded to his hometown Jets. The Jets cut Esiason after three seasons and he spent one year with the Cardinals before contemplating retirement. In the end, he decided to rejoin the Bengals for one last season.
Esiason replaced Jeff Blake partway through the season and finished strong, winning four of his last five games and throwing a 77-yard touchdown on the final play of his career.
Warrick Dunn
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The 12th overall pick in 1997, Dunn starred for the Buccaneers for five seasons before moving to the hated Falcons for a subsequent six seasons. Dunn returned to where it started in 2008 and posted a respectable 786 yards rushing before getting released in early 2009 and calling it a career.
Herschel Walker
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Walker's pro football career technically started in the USFL, but for the purposes of our list we'll consider only the years since he joined the Cowboys in 1986.
Walker was traded to the Vikings in perhaps the most famous trade in football history, then moved on to the Eagles and Giants before returning to the Cowboys in 1996 and spending the final two seasons of his career as a third-down back with the team. They weren't exactly memorable years, with Walker totaling 16 carries for 103 yards rushing over his final 32 games.
Charles Haley
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Along with Tom Brady, Haley is one of only two players to earn five Super Bowl rings. Unlike Brady, Haley did it with multiple teams. His first two rings came with the 49ers, the team he spent the first six seasons of his career with, then he jumped to the Cowboys and won three more in his five seasons in Dallas before retiring.
Haley rejoined the 49ers in 1998 after being out of football for almost two years and spent the last two seasons of his career where he started, making three sacks in his final campaign to increase his career total to 100.5.
Jevon Kearse
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"The Freak" won Defensive Rookie of the Year honors with the Titans in 1999, then spent four more seasons with the team before departing in free agency for the Eagles. After four seasons in Philadelphia, Kearse returned back where it started for two more seasons in two-tone blue, but by that point injuries had limited him to a shell of his former self.