ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Jabrill Peppers came off the sideline with the Michigan offensive unit last Saturday against Penn State and asked quarterback Wilton Speight a question:

“OK, what I got?”

Speight pulled out the oldest playbook in football – the palm of his hand. On that, he diagrammed Peppers’ role on the play: line up as a slot receiver, come in motion right to left, and we will fake a jet sweep to you.

This is how simple an increasingly complex game can be with the most versatile man in football. Turn the Big House into the world’s largest sandlot field, draw it up with an index finger and just watch him play.

Peppers did his job on that particular play – one of his many Michigan moonlighting jobs. His day job is outside linebacker, but in reality the redshirt sophomore has performed a dizzying 13 different positional tasks this season. There are more to come.

Since he set up Michigan’s first touchdown of the day with a 53-yard punt return, the Nittany Lions were highly attuned to Peppers’ sudden presence on offense. Thus when Speight faked the jet sweep to No. 5, much of the Penn State defense pursued the highly explosive decoy.

That left a lane up the middle for running back De’Veon Smith to gain 39 yards, jump-starting yet another scoring drive in a 49-10 Michigan rout.

By merely going in motion, Jabrill Peppers can change a game. Just put him on the field – anywhere – and big things tend to happen.

“Those eye-popping plays happen every day,” coach Jim Harbaugh said. “You give him something new, for example, whether it’s an offensive snap and know he hasn’t done it before, and then he goes out to practice and everybody is just looking like, ‘Nobody’s done it that well. Guys that play that position don’t do it that well.’

“Jabrill is really good at football. That’s kind of become what we say.”

Jabrill Peppers is really good at football – perhaps as good at it as anyone in the nation. And football has been good to him – as a release, as an escape, as a vehicle that has carried an angry boy to a happy place.

Jabrill Peppers and the Wolverines have plenty of reasons to smile so far this season. (Getty) More

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The special teams meeting is set to start at 2:15, and Jabrill Peppers keeps a watchful eye on the clock. He doesn’t want to be late. This is Wisconsin week, a battle of two unbeaten teams, and the stakes are increasing with each victory.

But ask him about his chosen sport and he will disengage from the urgency that is a daily byproduct of Harbaugh’s program. He will step back from the moment and appreciate the bigger picture.

“Me and football,” Peppers says, “we’ve got a real good relationship. It got me out of a lot of bad situations. It started as a way to channel my aggression and my anger.”

His nickname is “Breezy,” but Peppers played more like a tornado – swirling malevolence driven from within. The anger came from his precarious existence amid an urban New Jersey culture that swallowed up many people in Peppers’ life.

His father, Terry, went to prison on weapons charges when Jabrill was 7, and stayed there for more than 10 years. There was suspected gang activity, according to reports.

His older brother, Don Curtis, was murdered at a Chinese restaurant in Newark when Jabrill was 14. At that time, Jabrill himself was in danger of taking his life in the wrong direction – but Don’s death convinced him to find a better way.

“I had a lot of role models who weren’t doing the right thing,” Peppers said. “It was not your typical upbringing – you see a lot of things young people don’t necessarily need to see. You had to grow up a lot faster.”

Jabrill was the youngest of a sprawling group of brothers and cousins, and they did everything together. They would play basketball until the games got too contentious, then switch to football. After that, they would go back to a cousin’s house and make music, recording rap songs. (That remains a favorite pursuit of Jabrill’s, something he takes almost as seriously as his football.)

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