CANTON, Ohio — Hall of Fame general manager Bill Polian remembers seeing Luke Kuechly a year before he was eligible for the draft, and he started thinking he'd be capable of big things.

And that extended to the following year, when he did everything he could to getting back up in the order to get him. Because when he came back from a scouting trip to Boston College in 2011 (the Colts would take a quite good tackle in Anthony Castonzo that year), his mind kept wandering back to the sophomore he saw there.

"As the saying goes, 'He jumped off the the film; couldn't miss Luke Kuechly," Polian said. "And I remember coming back the next day and having breakfast with (coach) Tony Dungy and always, the first thing he'd say, 'Who'd you see yesterday, who do you like?' and that kind of thing.

"And, I said, 'I saw a guy that, if we played him at will linebacker in our Tampa 2 defense, which was the featured position, he's going to rank right up there with Derrick Brooks.' So not surprising that he's in Canton, surprised that it took so long, to be honest."

Derrick Brooks was in a team photo with Kuechly on Friday morning, the next step in entering into the most select club in football.

The returning Hall of Famers circled around this year's class — with Panthers defensive end Julius Peppers in the back row, cutting up with former Panther Jared Allen — and welcomed them in.

And among that group, among his peers, the respect they have for the latest Panthers linebacker to enter the Hall is clear.

"The consistency," former Browns left tackle Joe Thomas replied, when asked what stood out about Kuechly's career. "He was that guy that wherever he was on the field, you couldn't come anywhere near him because he was going to make the tackle, never missed a tackle. He never missed a read. He was always where he needed to be in coverage.

"And so I think about one of the most reliable defensive players in NFL history."

Joe Thomas once played 10,363 snaps of professional football in a row without missing one, over 10 years without missing a single play.

If Joe Thomas considers you consistent, then that's what you are.

Even his classmate, Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, marvels at what Kuechly was able to do.

"Playing against Luke was a complete nightmare," Fitzgerald said. "There's nothing worse as an offensive player than lining up in a play and a guy on the defensive side of the ball telling everybody else the play that you know you're running coming out of the huddle.

"There's nothing more demoralizing."

Larry Fitzgerald is second all-time in receptions and receiving yards behind some guy named Jerry Rice. If he's demoralized, that's the power you have on people.

And because of that, Polian said he actively worked to trade up in the 2012 draft to get him. The Colts used the first overall pick that year on quarterback Andrew Luck, which was an easy call at the time. And they didn't pick again until the 34th spot, which he knew wasn't going to work.

So he made call after call trying to trade back up, to no avail, because the Panthers took him ninth overall. As good as Luck was, he's not here this weekend.

And Polian admits, Luechly was likely well served by landing with a team that put him at middle linebacker five games into his career and left him there, because that brought out Kuechly's best traits.

"Certainly in Tony's system, it's very likely he'd have been like Brooks," Polian said. "But he ended up in the right place because middle linebacker allowed him, with his ability to diagnose, his speed, his ability to get through blocks, and most importantly, his diagnostic ability, which is among the best I've ever seen. Middle linebacker is the right place for him because he got a chance to make many more plays."

Polian is the man who was the Panther GM in 1995 and signed Sam Mills, and has watched Mills, San Francisco's Patrick Willis, and Miami's Zach Thomas inducted in recent years to add to the middle linebacker fraternity.

And he's aware of the Panthers' proud tradition that he started.

But this guy is different.

"Well, there have been a lot of great linebackers in Carolina, he's at the top of the list," Polian said. "We've put three linebackers into the Hall of Fame who are contemporaries in recent years who are contemporaries of Luke's.

"He's far and away the best of that group."

And even here, among the best of the best, Kuechly does not enter the room with anything to apologize for. He was named All-Pro seven times in eight seasons. The only players in league history to do that at a higher percentage are Barry Sanders and Jim Brown, and he's immediately ahead of Reggie White and Anthony Munoz on that list. That's the company he's keeping now.

So Thomas winced a bit, when asked the unfair question of how Kuechly stacks up among the people he now walks among.

"That's a hard question," Thomas said. "I think you know he played a different style, but as far as like if I'm a coach thinking about, 'Hey, who do I want playing middle linebacker?' he's going to be my first selection because I know I can count on every single play to be exactly where he needs to be, and he's going to do exactly what I tell him to do."