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CHARLOTTE -- On the day the bill arrived from last season, the Carolina Panthers took out another loan.

One year after trading away their first-round pick in the NFL Draft, the Panthers gave away next years' first-round pick to move up and grab Florida State defensive end Everette Brown with the 43rd pick overall. The most stable roster in the league remained so Saturday, as Carolina went for depth at a position it was already strong at before taking cornerback Sherrod Martin from Troy with the 59th pick.

Julius Peppers will remain a Panther despite murmurs that he would be involved in a draft-day trade. In the days leading up to the annual player allocation, Peppers didn't even sign the tender necessary to allow the team to trade him. The unspoken message Saturday was that the Panthers had signed his eventual replacement, just in case.

Otherwise, it was business as usual for Carolina, which went into a draft without a first-round pick for the second time ever. Next year will be the third, which Marty Hurney admitted was a calculated risk.

"Sure it is," the general manager said. "Every time you do it. But you do it for players you think can come in and help you right away."

For all the excitement leading to the first day of the college draft, the Panthers were never involved. The first round came and went for Carolina, no clandestine attempts to deal Peppers, no real urgency to get into a first round that appeared to be average at best.

While in-state college players such as Wake Forest linebacker Aaron Curry and North Carolina receiver Hakeem Nicks went in the first round, what NFL chatterboxes tried to turn into a national holiday simply wasn't observed in Charlotte. The truth is, the annual player allocation is another reminder that football is out of control. The team from economic wasteland Detroit opened the process by signing Matt Stafford of Georgia for $78 million.

Carolina will apparently pay Peppers $16.7 million for one more season and assess the situation again this time next year.

Peppers had requested a trade after the Panthers franchised their star defensive end before the cap deadline, and he suggested he wouldn't be happy about coming back. His camp toned down the rhetoric as Saturday neared, knowing a few NFL teams were only mildly interested.

"I had no conversations about it," Hurney said.

New England, Philadelphia, Dallas and Miami indicated various levels of interest in Carolina's disgruntled pass-rusher, though none showed the inclination to make a serious offer last week. Hurney said he was through talking about Peppers two weeks ago, suggesting the team had long ago committed to him. Carolina turned its attention instead to restructuring the contract of quarterback Jake Delhomme and studying for the second round of the draft and boring stuff like that.

The 43rd pick turned out to be a sleeper, an FSU defensive end considered a bit smaller than the average NFL pass rusher but a player some thought would be taken in the first round. Brown is from Stantonsburg, a tiny town 25 miles down the road from Bailey, where Peppers is from.

"I grew up watching Julius," he said. "I don't know him personally, but I watched him play in high school because his school is in the same conference as mine. I always wanted to follow in his footsteps and go to Carolina and hopefully get picked by the Panthers. I chose a different college, but the opportunity to play on the opposite side of Peppers is great company to be with."

He said he would come in and learn under Peppers and new defensive coordinator Ron Meeks, who ran the basic "Tampa 2" defense in Indianapolis.

Carolina struggled defensively late in 2008, going from one of the best run-stopping teams in the NFL to a unit that finished 18th in total defense after injuries thinned the middle of the defensive line. With the league's toughest schedule in 2009, the Panthers will be tested every week against teams from the NFC East and AFC East on the schedule in addition to its divisional games against Atlanta, New Orleans and Tampa Bay.

To get through the schedule healthy, the Panthers will need depth in the interior, which they will presumably address today. And with a future that will include another year with no first round pick, and who knows what with Peppers, the Panthers began the long, slow process Saturday of stretching its window of opportunity.

Carolina long ago decided it had a good enough team to compete in its division and beyond, and its draft philosophy in the past two years reflects that. The steady Panthers went into Saturday's draft with no intentions of getting a first-round pick, though Hurney said they got a player they'd projected to go before their pick.

So next year they'll do the same thing.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com