SAN FRANCISCO — There are dozens, if not hundreds, of tangible reasons for former Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly to go into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

But when you talk to his teammates, his coaches, his peers, there's always another level that he seemed to so naturally reach, one that so few people can attain.

That's the level Luke Kuechly stayed at throughout his entire career.

Lots of players work hard and prepare. No one worked harder or prepared like Luke Kuechly.

Lots of players are the kind of rare athletes who stand out in a crowd. Luke Kuechly stood out among the elite of the elite.

Lots of overachievers try to increase their chances of making a team by being good citizens of the locker room. Luke Kuechly did it naturally, treating undrafted rookies the same way he did Hall of Fame teammates, and cheerfully doing the work interns normally do.

And just like the rookies and the interns, those Hall of Famers flocked to him because they saw what he was capable of and the way he raised everyone around him.

For all those reasons, and more, Luke Kuechly fits perfectly on his new team — the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2026.

Kuechly was inducted into the Hall in his second year of eligibility on Thursday night at NFL Honors at the Palace of Fine Arts.

He was joined in this year's class by quarterback Drew Brees, wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, kicker Adam Vinatieri, and seniors candidate Roger Craig.

And while having a guy he squared up against twice a year (the Panthers and Saints were 8-8 in the regular season from 2012 to 2019 when Kuechly and Brees led their teams) adds a bit of flair to a star-studded night, it still feels a little strange for a man so grounded, so humble, so selfless, to be celebrated this way.

When Kuechly was eligible for the Hall of Fame for the first time last year, he only had one question about the process.

"If I get in, whenever that is, will we find out in enough time to get my mom a plane ticket?" Kuechly asked politely, without an air of expectation in his voice. "She'd be bummed if she missed that."

Yes, Luke Kuechly, your mom Eileen had time to get here, so she could join the football world in celebrating a player who did everything the right way, on and off the field, as long as he was able to do so.

And yes, Eileen Kuechly, you and your husband Tom raised a good man.

When Kuechly stepped onto the stage Thursday night, he became the third Panthers legend in five years to be inducted into the Hall, joining Sam Mills and Julius Peppers. He shares a lot of qualities of both — the leadership, selflessness, and ability to hit like Mills, and the transcendent athletic ability of Peppers.

He never got to meet Mills, despite embodying the ideal of Keep Pounding, but he got to play alongside Peppers for two seasons, after walking the halls of Bank of America Stadium marveling at the image of the legendary defensive end for five years before that.

But when Peppers thinks about his first impressions of Kuechly, he doesn't think about game-winning interceptions or blowing up game plans.

"What I remember most about Luke is that he was just a great teammate; one of my favorite teammates, man," Peppers said. "And I played a long time, had hundreds, maybe even thousands of teammates over the years. Luke was one of my very favorites, man, just because of how he was as a teammate, as a person, outside of how great he was as a football player, which that's a whole other story in itself.

"But just how he was with the guys in the locker room, just trying to be one of the guys, trying to be a great teammate, trying to be a leader, doing things the right way, being very professional. So that's what I saw in him and that's what I really admired about him more than all the great things he did on the field, right?"

When Peppers returned to Carolina in 2017 after a seven-year sabbatical in Chicago and Green Bay, he looked forward to playing alongside a linebacker he warned his former Bears and Packers teammates about. And when he got here, he found Kuechly — who was well established as a star in his own right then — right next to the undrafted rookies who had little chance of making the regular season roster.

"Luke was just being himself," Peppers said, a tone of respect obvious in his voice. "Just taking the time out to mentor or talk to a young player that he knows probably may not make the team. But still, Luke was there with him, trying to, you, you know, give him all the, give him everything that he needed to try to be successful.

"Just stuff like that, man; mentoring, being a great teammate with the guys in the locker room."

It should be noted that this is the same Luke Kuechly who volunteers to help the team's equipment staff on game days, taking a break from his prep as a radio analyst to peel jerseys over shoulder pads and line up socks for players in their lockers in his very particular way, making sure every detail is perfect.

He's been doing it since his one year as a scout post-retirement, and continues each week.

"He's the best worker we've got," equipment manager Don Toner said.

Yeah, that's Luke Kuechly. Just one of the guys.

Except not like one of the guys at all. He was special, to a team, to a city, to a region, and now to the whole sport.

"The rare combination of passion, preparation, and ability to identify opponents' plays truly set Luke apart," Panthers owners David and Nicole Tepper said in a statement. "A career Carolina Panther, Luke was the consummate teammate and remains a great ambassador for both the game and the Carolinas. Luke is rightfully being recognized with the game's greatest players, and we join Panthers fans everywhere in congratulating him for being selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2026."

One of the funny things about the mythology of Luke Kuechly is that we tend to lean into the intangibles, the work ethic, the intelligence, the study habits. Former head coach Ron Rivera loves to tell the story about Kuechly being the last player in the stadium on Christmas Eve, watching film, and maintaining his routine. "I had to throw him out," Rivera will laugh now.

And all those things are true, and part of the reason that Kuechly will be wearing a gold jacket in August.

But he also had so many tangible traits that so few people actually possess.

His teammate, friend, and fellow middle school football coach Greg Olsen sees it from a closer vantage point than most.

"We hear guys get talked a lot about like that: they're cerebral, they're students of the game, they're smart," Olsen began. "We hear those compliments a pretty decent amount, but very rarely do we then also get to pair that with elite physical traits, elite physical elements that made him a dominant player. Luke was not dominant because he was smarter than everybody. And he wasn't better than everybody, he wasn't smarter, he wasn't better than everybody cause he just was a better athlete, big, fast, strong. He was the player he was because he was all of it.

"He was uniquely smart, uniquely prepared, but he also had incredible physical talent and work ethic and strength, speed, size, run, hands, catch, like, and usually we talk kind of about guys in one of those two buckets. They either were like just a great athlete, a great physical player, or we say they were more cerebral and kind of overachieved. Luke was the embodiment of both of those, and there are very few guys in the history of the league that can say that."

Peppers is one of those guys, and he's willing to marvel at Kuechly's abilities in both those spheres.

"He was a great athlete and a lot of people missed that part of it just because of how he played the game intellectually," Peppers said. "And I didn't know how big Luke was until I got here. I mean, I had played against him and saw him, but getting a chance to be here in the weight room and see him, just see like how his body was under the uniform, he's like Superman.

"A lot of people missed that part about him because of how smart he played the game, but that's what happens when you put the physical with the mental together, you get a great player like that."

Of course, that's why Kuechly received the recognition he did during his playing days, in terms of awards won and respect earned.

When Hall of Fame defensive end Jared Allen was traded to the Panthers in the middle of his final season in 2015, he said his only goal "was to be part of Luke Kuechly's defense."

And for his entire career, that defense was Kuechly's world, and the rest of us got to witness it.

He was the league's defensive rookie of the year in 2012. He was the defensive player of the year in 2013. He was named to the All-Decade team of the 2010s. He was named All-Pro seven times in eight years, and the only two players in the history of the league who did that at a higher percentage were Barry Sanders and Jim Brown, and Kuechly's immediately ahead of Reggie White and Anthony Munoz on that list. That's the kind of rare company he kept.

One former teammate wondered aloud once, how it was possible that he only won one defensive player of the year award. Partly, that's because his prime coincided with a guy named JJ Watt, who won three of them, and will one day join Kuechly in Canton. Pass-rushers tend to get preference for those awards because sacks are a more easily visible form of impact on a game. So for Kuechly to break through Watt's historic run of three in four years showed how dominant he was.

"I mean, it's always been his physical and mental capabilities," Watt said of Kuechly. "I mean, he's an unbelievable physical athlete, just from speed, size, hitting everything, but his mental game is second to none. He studied the game harder than anybody else. He knew what everybody on the field was supposed to do, his team and their team. And he diagnosed and read plays and reacted so much faster than anybody else.

"I mean that people love to pull up the mic'd up segments and everything, and the plays where he's calling out what they're going to do and everything, and that's unbelievable. But you still have to make the plays, and you're still going against the best athletes in the world, and he did it every single week."

That's why it's easy to get lost in the sea of statistics.

You can hear about the 1,092 tackles in eight years, or that he had more than 100 tackles in every season (even the year he played just 10 games because of injuries). Numbers like that wash over you.

What's harder to measure is the true impact.

Before he coached Kuechly here, Rivera played alongside Hall of Fame middle linebacker Mike Singletary on the legendary 1985 Bears defense. He coached Hall of Fame middle linebacker Brian Urlacher. Ron Rivera knows what this looks like and what the position is capable of meaning to an entire team.

So when he saw Kuechly peel under out routes that he shouldn't have been able to reach, when he saw him get downfield with receivers and pick off passes, he realized he was watching a different level of athlete and competitor.

"Teams prepared for those guys, they prepared for Urlacher, they prepared for Patrick Willis, and they prepared for Luke," Rivera said. "Luke showed people that you had to prepare for him. You had to understand what he was capable of.

"I mean, he impacted the game where people had to prepare for him, but he also impacted where people saw how things can be done. Because he was tremendously physically gifted, like Brian Urlacher, who was a tremendous player who had the athleticism to make plays. Luke was the same kind of athlete, but I'll say this, Luke was a more instinctual linebacker than Brian was."

Having linebackers talk about other linebackers reveals the depth of the respect Kuechly carries in this game.

Panthers general manager Dan Morgan, whose career also burned bright for a short time, marveled at the impact Kuechly could have on a game.

"The instincts are the first thing that comes to mind, tenacity, sideline-to-sideline speed," Morgan began an impromptu scouting report. "And then just his football IQ, obviously, everybody knows how smart he was. But the way that he studied film, so you combine the instincts with the film study, knowing what teams are going to do, like he's got a step on the opponent on every play.

"It's a guy that's consistently around the ball and like on the ball quickly and if you look at Luke and like his ability to just like feel things and anticipate things, not many people have that. So when you do see it, it really stands out."

Morgan laughed and recalled his days as a young scout with the Seahawks, locking onto the film of the Boston College All-American during the 2011 season and the build-up to the 2012 draft. One of the Seahawks coaches at the time was a proponent of Alabama linebacker Dont'a Hightower and argued with Morgan that he was the better player and the better fit. And Hightower went on to a fine career, making two Pro Bowls and winning three Super Bowl rings with the Patriots.

But he's no Luke Kuechly.

"I remember actually having an argument out in Seattle about Luke Kuechly and Dont'a Hightower," Morgan laughed. "I was a huge Luke Kuechly fan. Like it wasn't even close to me. I just remember watching his tape at BC and just being blown away by the type of player he was.

"You could see that in all the instincts, he is a special one."

Thursday night, all of those special traits were recognized, and his place in football history was secured.