CHARLOTTE, N.C. – JJ Jansen was ready to quit.
It was 2009, less than a month into his first training camp with the Carolina Panthers, and everything “felt really heavy’’ for the second-year long-snapper out of Notre Dame.
So Jansen called his wife, Lauren, who hadn’t moved to the Charlotte area yet. He shared his fear of being cut and suggested the job he’d been doing since his sophomore year in high school so he could play football with his “baseball buddies’’ wasn’t something he could do anymore.
“I don’t remember her exact words, but it was basically like, ‘You don’t quit.