acquitted of multiple assault charges<\/a> in January, three months after he was arrested following a confrontation with a woman at his Braintree home.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m just happy it\u2019s over with and I get back to doing what I love to do,\u201d Peppers said after Wednesday\u2019s practice. \u201cIt was a learning experience. I learned a lot from it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those were Peppers\u2019 first public comments since the day a Quincy District Court jury cleared him of all charges.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to be quiet for three months,\u201d the 29-year-old told reporters after the verdict was read on Jan. 24. \u201cThis was all I could think about, and this is the first time in my life where football wasn\u2019t the most important thing on my mind. I had to just sit through everyone pouring dirt on my name, everybody for the most part thinking that I actually did these things. \u2026 To me, crimes against children and women are the most egregious things that you can do. To be accused of that, it just hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peppers was placed on the Commissioner\u2019s Exempt list following his arrest and sat out the next eight games. He returned to the field in a Dec. 1 loss to Indianapolis but suffered what proved to be a season-ending hamstring injury in his second game back.<\/p>\n
Now, Peppers is one of the longest-tenured members of a revamped New England defense that added Milton Williams, Carlton Davis, Robert Spillane, Harold Landry, Marcus Epps and others this offseason. He\u2019s also the only original 2024 Patriots captain still on the roster (fellow safety Kyle Dugger and tight end Hunter Henry were promoted to captain status during the season).<\/p>\n
\u201cI just try to be the same guy every day,\u201d Peppers said. \u201cI love this game, it\u2019s a big passion for me, and I just try to show that. Try to lead by example, do what the coaches say every time I\u2019m supposed to do it so the young guys have something to follow, and keep the standard, the standard. That\u2019s never going to change no matter who comes in here. The standard is the standard.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FOXBORO \u2014 Jabrill Peppers is glad to have his legal saga behind him as he enters his fourth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[7,7899,23670,23669,1167,249,2326,2094,6,208],"class_list":{"0":"post-86357","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-jabrill-peppers","10":"tag-jabrill-peppers-assault","11":"tag-jabrill-peppers-case","12":"tag-new-england","13":"tag-new-england-patriots","14":"tag-newengland","15":"tag-newenglandpatriots","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-patriots"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114587727590862632","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}