CHARLOTTE — When it was time each day for coaches to leave their offices on the second floor of Bank of America Stadium and go downstairs for team and position meetings during the Luke Kuechly era, assistant coach Steve Wilks had a simple message for the other coaches, knowing what they were about to walk into.

"We'd be walking to the elevator," Wilks said, "and I'd just say to the coaches every day, 'You better be on your s--- today, because he's going to be on his.'"

"He did say that all the time," head coach Ron Rivera laughed. "And he was right."

That, as much as any playbook, any game plan, any film study or any practice, sums up what it was like to coach the Hall of Fame linebacker, who is known as much for his mastery of the material as his production on the field.

"It could be hard as a coach because you're talking about a guy, he's not a bulls---er," Wilks said, in the way only he can. "You've got to make sure you're on top of your s---, because that's just how detailed he wants you to give it to him. So you've got to make sure that you're always prepared.

"When you're going into a room with guys like Luke and Thomas Davis, they didn't expect anything less than that. So as coaches we had to be prepared, and that's the kind of pressure, that's the expectations that those players put on us, particularly Luke and all those guys."

Of course, those coaches also had the benefit of getting to coach Luke Kuechly, so it automatically made them smarter and better at their jobs (and, by extension, richer and more successful).

Linebackers coach Al Holcomb joined the Panthers in 2013, following Kuechly's first season when he was named defensive rookie of the year. But it was still his first full position coach job in the NFL, so he walked into that room to instruct Kuechly, Davis, and Jon Beason on a daily basis. Play hard, coach.

"The linebackers that I had my first year in 2013, they were already in the system, so they understood the system probably better than I did," Holcomb said. "The thing about Luke that was really, really cool also was I was studying it and they helped me kind of come up to speed with it, and he was one of the main players that really helped explain some of the concepts that we were teaching."

Being the new guy, Holcomb said his first priority was getting to know these human beings, and he found out in a hurry that the Kuechly kid's clock just ticked a little differently, and that he didn't need to try to do too much on the first day.

"Yeah, don't screw them up, don't overcoach it," Holcomb said. "The one thing that I wanted to do upon coming in was develop a relationship with Luke. So when you develop a relationship, then you can talk about a lot of different things, and it's kind of everybody coming together. So when I came in, it was don't overcoach it, coach them, give them the things that they need, in terms of the preparation, the game plan, some fundamental things, but then just let them go play."

Sean McDermott, his defensive coordinator for his first six years in the league, said he didn't view it as pressure, but evidence of Kuechly's competitive nature. He was constantly pushing everyone to get better, including himself.

"I never felt pressure, and partially because Luke was such a class act," McDermott said. "But also because he always approached his role on our defense, at least when I was here, in a very curious manner, like, how can I learn more? How can I grow more? And he was always so curious.

"I vividly remember many a night, Wednesday, Thursday, especially Thursday nights, Luke being there late in the film room downstairs watching film. And you go in there, stop in to see him and check in on him, and you know there may be another linebacker or another defensive player or two, and as you said, he had this ability to kind of be a magnet and guys would just kind of go in there.

"It became a habit for half the defense, but it's just his ability, his curiosity of the game and wanting to learn, that was unique in and of itself."

McDermott understood exactly what Wilks meant, but loved the fact that Kuechly was spreading his gospel throughout the room, so he appreciated the effort.

"When you went down there to present, he had already watched the film," McDermott said. "And he took a few; he's a note taker. But he had already taken 80 percent of the notes on his own by watching the film on his own the night before.

"And so when he got into that meeting where we would present, he'd obviously polished the notes, but he would pretty much sit there. And it doesn't take long for a player to figure you out if you haven't prepared as a coach the way that they need you to."

Rivera recognized the type. When he was defensive coordinator for the Bears from 2004-06, he coached another Hall of Fame middle linebacker in Brian Urlacher, and he was teammates with Mike Singletary on the legendary 1985 Bears defense.

So when he met Kuechly early on, he realized he had to coach him at an extra level of detail.

"In watching Sean get up there and discuss things and talk about what he wanted, how he wanted it done, and to watch the way that notes were being taken, especially by Luke, you could see that he was trying to absorb everything," Rivera said. "And then the questions he would ask coming back, OK? 'Oh, I saw something, let me ask you about this.' He'd say, 'I saw this on tape, what about this?'

"So to me, it was he wanted to know the answers to the questions, even if the questions weren't going to be asked, he still wanted to have the answers. So I think because he took so many notes and then went over them and recognized what the important ones were, he would put them into his other notebook.

"That's the book that mattered. This was the one I went back and looked at. Because those had all the answers. So he tried to have all the answers, and that's why I think he watched so much film. That's why I think he went back and had this extra notebook with extra things that were set off to the side."

Once Kuechly had done his individual film study, his own notes, and then the second-level notes, it was time to put it together on the field.

"That's where it really came to life, was on the practice field," Rivera said. "That's where the concepts were put into action."

Holcomb saw it early on in his career here, and it opened his eyes.

"There are times when Luke doesn't say a whole lot, and he leads by example, with the way that he competed every day in practice," Holcomb said. "Against his teammates, against himself, kind of set the stage and set the standard for the room and for the defense for that matter. And those things permeated through our linebacker room."

Holcomb said as he moved on his career — he went to Arizona as defensive coordinator for Wilks' one year as head coach — he would use examples he learned from Kuechly as teaching tape.

From a preseason game in 2013 when he forced a fumble that Thomas Davis returned for a touchdown, to famous plays like the Dallas pick-six in 2015, Holcomb has shown Kuechly to other players for years as an example of exactly how to do this thing.​

"I still use that," Holcomb said, laughing about the "Smurf uniforms" and the fact the Cowboys had the temerity to accept favorite status against a 10-0 team that day. "Wherever I go, I show defensive players what it looks like — that's what it looks like.

"The pick was film study, OK, and there's not a lot of linebackers or players in the league that can conceptually understand what was about to happen, and that's the difference. That's what separated Luke, right? And I learned as a coach by watching Luke and working with him, but those are things that I still carry with me today, those teaching concepts."

But coaching a player like Luke Kuechly also demands accepting that there's someone in the room who likely knows the material as well as, or more, than you do. And not everyone's ready for it. Kuechly would occasionally go to coaches questioning particular game plans, and Rivera said that if Kuechly was questioning it, it made him question whether it was the right thing to do.

That creates its own kind of stress.

"Yes, because if your ego is more important, you're going to make bad decisions as a coach, in my opinion," Rivera said when asked if there was pressure coaching a player of his caliber. "But if a guy's willing to challenge you and say, 'Hey, what about this?' That's the best thing going. You've just got to be able to handle it and accept it that he just may know something that you don't.

"I know this: a couple of times, if there was something that, that didn't fit the guys, I would throw it out. And I think sometimes you need to do that. Why? Because you're telling the players, 'Hey, I trust you.' And at the same time, if he comes back and says, 'Hey, what about this, this, and this,' you can go, 'You know what, you're right, let's put that in.'

"When you do that, now you're telling the guy you do trust him, but at the same time, you've got to go out and do it right now, because you have some ownership. There's an art to coaching guys like that, and I think some of the things that we tried to do with them were the right things, and that was to trust him, and at the same time, show that we believe them."

If you have the ability to coach a Luke Kuechly, those are things you have to do.

As Wilks said, you have to be on yours, because he was always on his.