Stew's Take: Peanut Tillman Changed the Game

Jonathan Stewart tells a training camp story about Peanut Tillman.

Over the past couple of years, I've had the pleasure of co-hosting the Bleav in Panthers podcast with Desmond Johnson and legendary Panthers running back Jonathan Stewart. If you haven't checked us out yet, what are you doing? All joking aside, come stop by and chat with us each week during our open mailbag portion of the show. It's a lot of fun.

Each week after we record, I'll put together a quick write up here on the site highlighting a topic from the show, calling it "Stew's Take.'

This week, we somehow got off track and brought up the elite playmaker that Charles "Peanut" Tillman was. J-Stew admitted he was a victim of the 'Peanut Punch' and told the story about the first time it happened to him at training camp.

"Oh yeah, in practice. It was his first showing, it was an outside zone to the left and I got to the edge believe it or not. I was running up the sideline for probably about eight yards and I had the ball in my left arm and somehow I'm eight yards, eleven yards down the field and they're about to blow this whistle and I'm going to get an extra ten yards of a burst and I'm going to go back to the huddle. Peanut, out of nowhere, boom! Ball falls out, it goes out of bounds, but man was I upset. Coach (Jim) Skip(per) comes to the sidelines and says, 'aye baby, you got to hold on to the rock,' and I'm like coach, it went out of bounds. He said, 'I don't care where it went, you got to hold on to that thang. You know that boy is out there. He's going to come for it, you got to be ready at all times.'

"When I tell you that is a prime example of young guys taking advantage of a veteran that has elite experience of changing the game...man, Peanut Tillman changed the game. I honestly feel like that was a huge boost in the way we played that year. Turnovers, the emphasis on turnovers and going for the ball."

In his 13-year NFL career, Tillman forced 44 fumbles. He only jarred two loose during his lone season in Carolina in 2015 but as a team, Carolina led the league with 22 forced fumbles and 24 interceptions.

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