Of course, at that point, he was far from a Hall of Famer.<\/p>\n
High school Luke Kuechly was a tall, skinny kid, with the curly hair and the wire-rimmed glasses. There may be people who look like football players, but he wasn’t necessarily one of them at that time.<\/p>\n
So as a recruit, he was getting attention, if not from the biggest schools.<\/p>\n
Tom Kuechly, his father, said Luke dreamed of going to Notre Dame, even had the “Play Like A Champion Today” sign on his bedroom wall as a kid. When you grow up Catholic in the Midwest, that’s a common dream.<\/p>\n
So when Fighting Irish assistant Jon Tenuta showed up to watch St. X against Cleveland’s St. Ignatius, Specht thought Kuechly might end up on Notre Dame’s radar.<\/p>\n
“John came in on a Friday, and we’re sitting in my office, and I said, who are you looking at?” Specht recalled. “And he said, No. 3, and I said, ‘It’s about time,’ and he started laughing. He said, ‘No, No. 3 for Saint Ignatius,’ who was a player named Dan Fox, who ended up going to Notre Dame, and he was a great player.<\/p>\n
“But I looked at John, and I said, well, I think you’re recruiting the wrong No. 3.”<\/p>\n
Dan Fox was a captain at Notre Dame and had a fine career, even playing a couple of games for the Giants in 2014. He was not, as it turns out, the right No. 3 that night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Of course, at that point, he was far from a Hall of Famer. High school Luke Kuechly was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":956946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[79,235,260,2567,7,81,105922,6,236,18001],"class_list":["post-956945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-carolina-panthers","tag-app-news","tag-carolina","tag-carolina-panthers","tag-carolinapanthers","tag-football","tag-latest-news","tag-luke-kuechly-hall-of-fame","tag-nfl","tag-panthers","tag-spotlight"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116992601208534087","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/956946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}