CANTON, Ohio — Colin Jones knew there were some Saints down there; he just couldn't see them.

Greg Olsen knew he just kept hearing the same name over and over again.

And at a certain point, Thomas Davis knew that no matter how well he played, he wasn't going to catch up.

With Saints quarterback Drew Brees and Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly going into the Pro Football Hall of Fame together this weekend, you can only remember that in each of their respective locations, each of them had a distinct advantage.

But as good as the hermetically-sealed fast track at the Superdome was for Brees, the rain that fell on Bank of America Stadium on Dec. 22, 2013 was even better for Kuechly.

Kuechly poured down 24 tackles on the Saints that day in a driving rainstorm that started in the second half, when the game turned into the kind of slop he loved, and the Panthers reached the level they were building to.

"My favorite version of the game," he said. "It was kind of the epitome of what football should be, in the NFL. It's December, you're playing at home, these games matter because they dictate home-field advantage and the division.

"It was an awesome game."

Those 24 tackles also represented a league record. Tackles have been counted as an official stat since 1994, and since then, only David Harris of the Jets in 2007 has had as many in a single game.

"I lost count of how many tackles," former Saints coach and now-Broncos boss Sean Payton said. "I guess he had 24 tackles, and it felt like 40."

"You can't even do that as a create-a-player on Madden, let alone doing that in real life," quarterback Cam Newton said. "And when you see that, you knew, 'Yeah, he's different.'"

"Luke went off," then-Panthers defensive coordinator Sean McDermott said. "I mean, he was making tackles left and right. And the way Luke played the game, he would tackle you, yes. But when he tackled you, he was trying to give you a little bit more, and that's what the good ones really do.

"And, and Luke had that that day. He wanted to punish you when he tackled you and not just get you down but punish you as well. And, you could tell that. I'm up in the box calling the plays, but you could feel him in that game, really from about the second quarter on."

But beyond setting a record, the stakes for the Panthers and Saints meant it was going to be a big game anyway.

Two weeks earlier, the Saints had won their home game 31-13, to improve to 10-3 and get the inside track on the division title, with the Panthers a game behind at 9-4.

But the Saints opened the door with a loss at St. Louis the following week, making the rematch a de facto NFC South title game.

And it didn't look like it was going to monsoon at first. But when the rain and Luke Kuechly rolled in, neither stopped.

"The one thing I remember about that game was it was raining so hard, I was running down on a kickoff, and you couldn't even see the Saints," safety Colin Jones laughed.

But you could hear things, like the PA announcer saying "tackle by Luke Kuechly" so many times.

"I remember he literally made every single tackle," tight end Greg Olsen said. "I remember the rain was coming down so hard. I just remember it got wet, it got sloppy, it was pouring, we were having a hard time moving the ball at times, and the game kind of stood still.

"And then literally every single play at the end, the crowd's yelling, LUUUUUUUUKE, he's getting up, he's soaking wet, he's sliding all over the place, the field's a mess, and he single-handedly keeps us in that game."

Of course he did have some competition. In the first half when it was dry, the Saints were playing something closer to their normal game, which put the ball in space and in the vicinity of Thomas Davis more often. But when the deluge began, and both teams were forced to (mostly) run, that meant the traffic was coming Kuechly's direction.

Even when they didn't run, they were limited to a lot of dump-off passes, which were easy cleanups for Kuechly during his defensive player of the year season.

And while that was something to celebrate, it still annoyed Davis, who competed at everything with his friend.

"That's one of the things that I feel like really forms the best duos, right?" Davis said. "When you go out there on Sundays, and you're competing against one another, and you no longer have to focus in on the offenses that you're playing against. It became a situation where we were trying to see who was going to be the person, not in a selfish way, but who was going to be the first person that had the biggest impact on the game amongst one another. And we would talk about it on the sideline, and I vividly remember playing the New Orleans Saints."

This is where we should note that counting tackle stats is sometimes an art and sometimes a science. Even though the league has tracked them the entire time the Panthers have been a team, coaches also had their own way of recording them, and you'd run into situations where there were more tackles awarded than plays run by the opponents.

Linebackers coach Al Holcomb was willing to be generous.

"I think I might have clocked him for maybe like 35 tackles," Holcomb said with a laugh. "But I couldn't go too far because then the stats and my stats would be way over here, but what I remember about that game is he had 24 or 26 and a pick, and his counterpart had double-digit tackles and also had an interception, and those two played a fantastic football game."

Davis was aware, even if his math was slightly off.

"I was leading like 12-8 in tackles at that point, and I looked over at him, and I'm like, 'I'm kicking your ass right now,'" Davis said. "And he's pouting, he's looking around. He's like, 'Whatever, TD.' So then, another quarter comes up. By the end of that quarter, Luke had broken the NFL record."

By the official gamebook, Kuechly was up 11-8 on Davis at halftime, though Davis had two tackles for loss and an interception, and he still sounds a little salty about it.

"Like I said, I was kicking his ass before that, before he ended up turning into that," Davis laughed. "And obviously it ended up being a rain game, so the Saints had to run the ball a lot more than they probably would have wanted to that day, which boded well for us and what we were capable of doing.

"But at the end of the day, man, the tackles still have to be made, and me and Luke were, we were competing, man. We were out there and just going at it. And I was giving him a hard time because I was winning. And he ended up showing me, saying, 'All right, TD, I'll one-up you by going to set the new NFL record."

Between them (officially) they finished with 40 tackles and two interceptions. The Saints ran it 30 times and attempted 45 passes, which means on more than every other play, either Kuechly or Davis was the one stopping it. Captain Munnerlyn was a distant third with nine, a number so small in comparison that you, by rule, have to spell it out. ​

"I mean, that game was just insane, you know what I mean?" said linebacker AJ Klein, for whom there were no tackles left to record that day. "It doesn't matter where the ball was snapped, what hash, what location; it sounded like Luke was in on every single play, and if he wasn't making the tackle, those 24 tackles that he made, he was right next to the football. And, just to see him go sideline to sideline, and there was nobody else that did it like him.

"To be a teammate, to be a friend, but also to be on the field with him at the same time and be able to witness some of the things that you see him do like that, you stand back. And obviously, when you're in it, you're never like, 'Oh, this guy's going to be a Hall of Famer,' but we knew he was the best in the league by far."

And again, this was the Saints. Brees was at his peak then, as they were fourth in total offense and second in passing, as he threw for 5,162 yards that season.

"You just knew this guy is elite," head coach Ron Rivera said of Kuechly. "Because, you're disrupting, you're interfering with a well-oiled machine."

As the game went on, the Panthers were the ones able to make the plays through the air, with Newton hitting Domenik Hixon for the game-winning touchdown with 23 seconds remaining, capping a 17-13 win.

Olsen, as you might expect, can go chapter-and-verse on the play, but what stood out to him the most was the symbolic weight of pushing through. After going 6-10 in Newton's rookie year (2011) and 7-9 in Kuechly's, that helped them to a 12-4 finish, and what would become the first of three straight division titles for the Panthers.

"I just remember without Luke, we don't have that game-winning drive to go down there and win that game, win the division, really for the first time since we all had gotten there," Olsen said. "That was us taking that next step of like, all right, now we're a playoff team, we're in the picture. That was obviously our first good year, but we don't win that game at the end if Luke doesn't single-handedly take the game over on defense and keep a lid on it until our offense could kind of find its way there late.

"It's one of the craziest games I've ever, ever seen an individual player have."