SAN FRANCISCO — Two things usually start happening when Luke Kuechly gets nervous.

One, he sweats, the kind of training-camp-in-Spartanburg forehead humidity that you can see from 10 yards away. And then, he starts making it about everyone other than Luke Kuechly.

One of these days, Luke Kuechly is going to realize he's worth talking about, even if it took something other than his fellow Hall of Famer Drew Brees casually calling him "the greatest defensive player I ever played against."

That still hadn't quite dawned on him Thursday night, when under the hot lights in an impromptu press conference room in the way back of the Palace of Fine Arts, in a call-the-fire-marshal packed room of people waiting to hear from him, he stood as a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

What's it like being that guy, Luke Kuechly?

"No, I just, you just always think of yourself as I'm Luke from Cincinnati, Ohio," he said, struggling to get into gear to even begin talking about himself. "I went to St. Xavier High School and Boston College and played with the Carolina Panthers."

He just can't do it, even when he recalls a story of fellow Hall of Famer Michael Strahan visiting with him and the rest of this year's class — including Brees, Larry Fitzgerald, Adam Vinatieri, and Roger Craig — in the green room before NFL Honors.

Even as he considered being greeted into the most exclusive club in football, going from Panthers No. 59 to Hall of Famer No. 386, it kept circling back to everyone other than Luke Kuechly.

"Strahan came in and talked to all of us before we went out on stage, and just talked about enjoying the moment and embracing it," Kuechly began. "And it goes, this also goes back to what Ron (Rivera) used to always talk about, he said, be where your feet are.

"And there's nothing truer than that of enjoying every moment of the process. Because what I learned playing is that you really think it's going to last forever, and then you wake up, and it's done. So I think this could be another opportunity where you just really live in the moment and enjoy it because you're going to wake up and blink and it's going to be gone."

That moment is not ending anytime soon for Kuechly, but at every turn, he kept making time. Someone handed him a phone, and he did an interview with Mike Dyer of WCPO in Cincinnati, who covered him back in those St. Xavier days, and it was exactly the same as stopping for Steve Wyche of the NFL Network, there in the moment together.

After fulfilling his media obligations, he hustled off into a car he kept waiting because he struggles to say no, and he finally joined a party of friends and family (including former teammates Jonathan Stewart and JJ Jansen) at the Osso Steakhouse in Nob Hill.

The people around those tables in the private room are the ones he's been taking care of for the last 15 days, since he walked into his home and saw Julius Peppers standing in his family room wearing a gold jacket (more on that later). Since that moment, when the Panthers' legends and teammates became teammates all over again, Kuechly has been making arrangements, trying to keep everyone happy.

That's why Howard Skall stood at the back of the room and smiled Thursday. He's Kuechly's longtime marketing agent and confidant, the guy who's supposed to be taking care of Kuechly, who too often watched Kuechly pick up litter after meals at commercial shoots, because that's just what he does.

"He's making me look bad, because that's what I'm supposed to be doing," Skall laughed. "He's picking it up, throwing it away for everybody, and they're looking at him like, 'Who is this guy?' Like, we've never had talent literally take our plates and throw them away for us, right? But that's who he is."

Skall has known Kuechly since the spring of 2012, before he was drafted by the Panthers in the first round. And what he saw Thursday night was the culmination of all those years.

"I think he's just grown," Skall said. "I mean, 2012 Luke is kind of wide-eyed. And he talks a lot about it; he was fortunate to go to a great locker room and have mentors and leaders he could learn from.

"And now I see him, and over time, he became that leader. He was the guy that took charge, and I'm not even talking about on the field stuff, just from a confidence standpoint, personality standpoint, and just wanting to take charge of everything, take care of everything, take care of the people he loves in his life. And I think he's, he obviously had that the whole time, but you just see the confidence in the person he's grown into, it's cool to see. I mean, it's just really, really, really cool to see. I'm just happy for him because he's so deserving."

That 2012 Luke, the wide-eyed one, thought back to his first trip to NFL Honors, when he went to New Orleans to accept the defensive rookie of the year award.

"I met Shaq!" he said, and the exclamation mark was in his voice.

But he also met a lot of the guys who are wearing the same jacket he'll wear in August. That included Anthony Munoz, and for a kid from Cincinnati, that's as big as it gets, and he remembered what it felt like on Thursday night.

"Oh man, I'd never been to a Super Bowl before," he began. "So I think that was cool. And it was my first time really ever spending time in New Orleans, because we had played down there the last game of the year, but you fly down and play and then leave. I got a chance to experience New Orleans, which was really cool.

"And then NFL Honors to me was awesome. Because you get to see a bunch of guys that you played with in the NFL. And then there was guys like Jerry, I got to walk by Jerry Rice. And as a 21-year-old kid, you walk by Jerry Rice, and then there's Joe Montana and Steve Young, and you're at all these experiences during the week. And you walk by dudes that you grew up watching, and they're just casually walking around, and you can see them everywhere. They're in your hotel. And it's just cool, the guys that you get to see at the Super Bowl.

"And it's less about all the hoopla going on and more about the guys that you get to see in real life."

As those guys came parading on stage to greet him and the rest of the class Thursday night, it still didn't feel real to him.

Kuechly admitted that time to reflect was hard to find. There are people to take care of. But when most of them peeled away to take the first bus to the theater to walk the red carpet and find their seats before the show, he had a rare few moments to his own thoughts.

And immediately, they turned to everyone else.

"So I had like an hour in the room by myself and I was like, first of all, I get a little bit of quiet time," he admitted. "But then, then you think about how cool it is and like wow, we're going to NFL Honors, and I've got to walk out on stage, and you start to think of why you're walking out on stage and how special it is.

"And you start to think about all the people that got you to that point, from coaches to the equipment guys to the weight staff, ... I think that hour gave you an opportunity to say this is, this is pretty cool. You start to get a chance to really soak in what's about to happen, and to be up there with Drew and Larry and Adam and Roger Craig, is pretty cool."

And cool was something Kuechly was grateful for, as those beads of sweat finally began to evaporate, as he stood next to an open door, the night air coming off the bay offering a brief and quiet reprieve.