GREEN BAY, Wis. – Julius Peppers is not mad. He’s not agitated. He’s not worried. He’s not disappointed. He’s not even surprised.

He may be a little curious – “It’s early,” he said with a knowing smile Thursday, “[so] maybe in Week 4, 5, 6, we can circle back to it and see” – but the 15-year NFL veteran and Green Bay Packers defense’s elder statesman isn’t overreacting to the limited time he spent on the field during the team’s season-opening victory at Jacksonville last week.

Peppers, 36, arrived at training camp knowing that the coaches intended to reduce his playing time this season – he said they’d had an “open dialogue” about the idea since he signed with the team in March 2014 – and understanding that giving some of his snaps on early downs to Nick Perry and Datone Jones would save him the wear-and-tear of defending the run so much.

He does believe he could handle more than the 29 snaps he played against the Jaguars – just 40 percent of the Packers’ 72 overall defensive snaps – and when asked Thursday if that number had been acceptable to him, Peppers again smiled and contemplated his words before answering.

“Look, this is what I’m doing: I’m playing the game plan the way that it’s written up and the way it’s presented in the meetings on Wednesday. Less opportunities is something that’s going to be an adjustment,” Peppers said. “It’s a long season. A very long season. We all are going to have to figure it out.

“Me, I’m going to have to make that adjustment and see how I fit into the role that I am being asked to play. I think the coaches upstairs are going to have to figure out the role that they want me to play – when they want to put me in, what’s enough, what’s not enough. It’s an adjustment period we’re going through right now. We’ll figure it out.”

The coaches say the reduced playing time is part of a concerted effort to keep Peppers fresh down the stretch. Including playoffs, he played 920 snaps in 18 games in 2014 (74 percent), then played 805 snaps in 18 games last year (66.3 percent). Two key offseason moves – re-signing Perry and moving Jones to “elephant” outside linebacker – were made with the intent of further curtailing Peppers’ playing time on early downs, and both former first-round picks looked good in the preseason and on Sunday.

Thus, Peppers played almost exclusively as a pass-rusher in the Packers’ dime package against the Jaguars, and that could be the case again Sunday night at Minnesota, given the Vikings will surely emphasize running the ball with Adrian Peterson.

“I’ll just say this: Julius is very football-smart. He knows where he can help the team out and he knows what else is in that room. And he knows it’s at least a 16-game season,” said Packers defensive line coach Mike Trgovac, who was Peppers’ defensive coordinator in Carolina early in his career. “So he’s very smart in that regard.”

Playing in all 36 of the Packers’ games (including playoffs) the past two years, Peppers has recorded 21 sacks, intercepted two passes, forced 10 fumbles and recovered three more. Of Peppers’ 11.5 sacks last season, 5.5 came in the season’s first eight games; six came in the final eight regular-season games and playoffs.

He’s repeatedly demonstrated that he still has game-changing ability, so the challenge for the Packers' coaching staff is to avoid the temptation to play him too much – like a running back you’re afraid to rest for a series, knowing he could break an 80-yard run at any time if he were in the game.

“You have to be careful because when you have a guy like Julius, there's always a tendency that you want to play him probably more early,” defensive coordinator Dom Capers explained. “So just have to be aware, because sometimes it's easy to forget how long Julius has been playing.”

Capers said Peppers’ playing time “could vary from one week to the next, but hopefully we can keep going” with the rotation used against Jacksonville.

“Any great player, OK, would like to play every down. But Julius is a smart guy,” Capers said. “We've just got to keep our finger on that. And where we go with it, who knows?”

Peppers said the biggest adjustment for him is maximizing his limited snaps and not being able to set opposing offensive linemen up for moves he wants to use later in the game. But he's willing to make that concession because he likes what he's seen from Perry and Jones.

“If you’re playing 55 to 60 snaps, you have opportunities to pace yourself, pick spots. When you’re not playing as many and you don’t know necessarily when you’re going to be in, you do have to sometimes make it happen when you’re out there,” Peppers explained. “Pass-rush is a four-quarter game, where you set guys up and when it’s money time, in the late third or fourth quarters, [you use] something that you know you want to go to because you set it up in the first half.

“[But] Nick played well. Datone did, too. So the more options we have available, the better in my opinion. That’s not a bad thing, to have more options and more guys playing well. That’s a positive thing.”