Good for Luke Kuechly
Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes one of your very best players is also one of your very best people. He or she not only leads your team but represents your organization and, if you’re really lucky, your city. Charlotte has had not one of these players in recent years, but two — Kemba Walker on the NBA Hornets and Luke Kuechly on the NFL Panthers. Really, they were just Kemba and Luke — one-name athletes for all the right reasons — sharing a town and lighting it up.
And now, like Kemba, Luke is gone.
Kuechly, just 28 years old, retired late Tuesday. He did it in a video, seated in a team linebacker room instead of standing on a podium, with his shirt collar a little crooked and his face a little uncertain — almost as if he needed to say it all before a camera now before he changed his mind. But he did say it, and an eight-year, seven Pro Bowl, Hall of Fame caliber career is done.
Good for him.
It’s far from the first time an elite professional athlete has retired so young, but it’s certainly become more common in the NFL since Patrick Willis and Calvin Johnson walked away from their careers in 2015 and 2016. Kuechly, who has had three reported concussions, didn’t say specifically in his video what caused him to retire. But when he said “There’s only one way to play this game since I was a little kid — to play fast, to play physical and to play strong,” it was hard not to conclude that the collisions that came at the end of fast, physical and strong were a big part in his final decision.
If that’s the case — or even if it isn’t — good for him.
For the vast majority of athletes, sports quit you before you quit sports. Doesn’t matter if you’re a middle school pitcher or a college football player or an NBA star who has lost that step you can’t afford to lose. Kuechly, however, gets to do it his way — perhaps sooner than he imagined, but perhaps soon enough that the game doesn’t haunt him.
As for his fans, and for Charlotte, it’s a loss of course. But as with Kemba Walker, it’s also a reminder that as other franchises and cities have navigated star athletes who were less than stellar off the court, Charlotte has enjoyed a run of remarkable stars. Yes, we’ve had troubled athletes, too, but from Sam Mills to Mugsy Bogues to Walker and Kuechly, we’ve had extraordinary players who are thoughtful, fun and jarringly kind. They’ve become one of us, in a way, people who’ve moved here, built a life, invested in this place, and made it their home.
That happens more often than you think with pro athletes, by the way. They’re good in ordinary ways, too. But if you’re lucky, the best ones will be the best representatives of your team, your franchise, your city. Luke Kuechly, eight years a Carolina Panther, was just that. Good for him. And good for Charlotte.
This story was originally published January 15, 2020 at 8:32 AM.