Scott Fowler: Luke Kuechly should make the Hall of Fame this week. But did you hear about Bill Belichick?

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Former Carolina Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly gets his second shot at the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Thursday night. If there’s any justice in the NFL world, he will make it.

But we already know that the Hall of Fame voters are a notoriously unpredictable lot, based on the fact that six-time Super Bowl champion coach Bill Belichick was reported last week by ESPN to have not made the Hall of Fame on his first try. That was ridiculous, of course, even allowing for Belichick’s twin NFL scandals and the Hall of Fame’s opaque voting system. Belichick had to be left off the ballot by at least 11 of the Hall of Fame’s 50 voters, despite being by many measures the most successful coach in NFL history. Somehow, he was.

I thought Kuechly should have made it last year, as a first-ballot Hall of Famer, but he didn’t. We all know the sort of magical career that Lu-u-u-u-u-ke had — eight seasons in which he was All-Pro seven times, AP Defensive Rookie of the Year once and AP Defensive Player of the Year once. Kuechly, whom the Panthers drafted No. 9 overall out of Boston College in 2012, was arguably the best inside linebacker in the NFL every single year he played. He even won the NFL’s league-wide sportsmanship award one year.

I spoke to Kuechly Monday by phone and he said the Hall of Fame process has been a “ton of fun,” no matter how it turns out Thursday.

“When I was playing fourth-grade football in Cincinnati,” Kuechly said, “this was never something that was on my mind, that I was going to be a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. So a lot of what is going through my head now is my football journey, from fourth grade until now.”

This year’s Hall of Fame class will be announced at the NFL Honors show Thursday night. If you look at predictions as to who’s going to make this list, Kuechly is usually a “yes,” but there are surprises every year. He said if he does make it that he wants to ensure that a lot of the glory is reflected on his Panthers teammates and coaches. “It’s an individual accomplishment, yes,” Kuechly said. “But football is the ultimate team game. And I think it would just really highlight that group of guys from that period when we had a ton of success. That, to me, is the coolest part.”

There are only three problems with Kuechly’s mostly perfect candidacy. All should be surmountable, in my opinion, but these are the sorts of things the 50 voters discuss (I’m not one of them, but know many of them).

The first: Kuechly only played eight seasons before retiring early, at age 28, due to serious injury concerns following the 2019 season.

The second: He never won a Super Bowl.

The third: The Hall of Fame purposely made itself harder to get into recently, which means that as few as three modern-era candidates could make it in 2026.

Two of the modern-era slots are likely spoken for already. Quarterback Drew Brees and wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald are first-time nominees that both had careers more than twice as long as Kuechly’s and ended up in the top two in most of the relevant QB and WR categories, respectively. They are considered slam dunks by almost everyone.

So that may leave only one more spot for a modern-era player, out of the other 13 worthy candidates on the modern-era finalist list. Jason Witten, Frank Gore and former N.C. State standout Torry Holt are among them. Holt, 49, is a finalist for the seventh time and eligible for the 12th time.

There may be up to three modern-era players elected other than Brees and Fitzgerald. But without going too deep into the weeds on the voting system, that would be unusual. Either way, a lot of deserving candidates won’t get in and will have to try again next year. Among them is former Panthers wide receiver Steve Smith, who didn’t earn a spot on the modern-day “Final 15” list this year after making it in 2025.

As far as the Belichick question, Kuechly demurred as to whether the coach should have made it in his first year of eligibility. “I don’t know if he should have or he should not have,” Kuechly said. “I think a lot of people are just very surprised, based on the resume he has, with six Super Bowls that he won as a head coach and two more (as an assistant) for eight total. It caught a lot of people off-guard.”

Kuechly won’t be the first Panther to make the Hall of Fame when he gets in — and he will get in, at some point. But he will be the first player or administrator to spend his entire career with the Panthers and make it. Julius Peppers, Sam Mills, Kevin Greene, Reggie White, Jared Allen and Bill Polian are all among the Pro Football Hall of Famers who spent part of their career with the Panthers (of that list, only Peppers spent more than half of it here). Kuechly, though, began and ended his career with the Panthers.

As Kuechly told me in a 2024 interview for our “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” series, he wanted to play longer, but his body wouldn’t let him. He had had multiple concussions by the time he retired, as well as some other injuries. As Kuechly said then: “I was getting banged up. I had some stuff pop up that just kept rearing its head. ... I wasn’t capable of playing how I wanted to… In my mind, mentally, I was like: ‘Man, I can’t do it anymore.’ And I thought that if I wasn’t 100 percent, I wasn’t doing my job how people expected me to do it…. So yeah, it’s a bummer. I love football. It brings me so much joy. It’s the best job in the world.”

Still only 34, Kuechly is now a radio analyst for the Panthers. He lives in Charlotte and also coaches middle-school football in town, alongside former Panthers teammates Greg Olsen and Jonathan Stewart.

Whether or not he becomes a Hall of Famer, Kuechly will be out in Santa Clara, Calif., all week for Super Bowl activities in the run-up to the 60th Super Bowl. “I’ve been going to that pretty much every Super Bowl week since I got into the NFL,” he said. “It’s so much fun because you get to see all these people you maybe only see 1-2 times a year. It’s a great opportunity to get together.”

If he does make the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Kuechly will attend the 60th Super Bowl on Sunday, and be recognized on the TV broadcast, with the other inductees. That field is the same one where Kuechly’s team lost in his lone Super Bowl appearance, in the 2015 postseason vs. Denver.