‘Luke Kuechly was the bar.’ Dan Morgan knows the path from concussions to retirement
Dan Morgan watched Luke Kuechly’s retirement play out from afar over the past few days, and understood it in a way few of us ever could.
“After watching Luke’s video,” Morgan said, “well, I’ve felt that way before. I know just what he’s talking about.”
The parallels between the careers of Kuechly and Morgan are eerie.
The Panthers drafted both linebackers in the first round — Morgan at No. 11 in the 2001 NFL draft, Kuechly at No. 9 in 2012.
Both started at middle linebacker in a Super Bowl for the Panthers early in their career. Both made the Pro Bowl within their first three seasons.
Both sustained multiple concussions with the Panthers.
And both played their last NFL game at age 28.
For years, Panthers fans have worried about Kuechly’s career ending up exactly like Morgan’s did — with an early, “Oh-what-might-have-been” retirement based on the mental and physical toll the game exacts from everyone who plays it.
And now that’s pretty much what happened.
I called up Morgan, now a highly-regarded front office man who is the player personnel director for the Buffalo Bills, to discuss it. He turned out to be in a good mood.
This reminded me that Morgan almost always was in a good mood as a Panther, too. Like Kuechly, he was uniformly pleasant. Like Kuechly, everyone enjoyed being around Morgan. Like Kuechly, every time Morgan got hurt, the whole stadium would cringe.
“By the end,” Morgan said, “It was just so taxing, being in the training room, every day. I could have made a lot more money playing. But literally there was no amount of money that would make it worth it anymore.”
Morgan, Kuechly and concussions
Morgan said that he returned to the game in a new role himself because “Football is in my DNA” and that, if Kuechly wanted to do so, too, he would be hired quickly.
“If Luke wants to coach or be in a front office somewhere,” Morgan said, “people would open their arms to that in about two seconds.”
Kuechly didn’t say exactly what made him want to leave football at age 28, with two years and about $21 million left on his contract. But the seven-time Pro Bowler had already made more than $63 million playing football, according to Spotrac figures, and he did suffer a total of three concussions as a Panther from 2015-17.
Morgan had at least five concussions with the Panthers, according to Observer stories from when he retired. And he had other severe injuries, too, enough so that in his seven-year Panthers career, he played in 59 games but missed 53. Like Kuechly, he never played an NFL game for anyone else.
“My body got beat up,” Morgan said. “Shoulder injuries. Sports hernias. A broken ankle. Then, at the end, I tore my Achilles. And it was still hard for me to let it go.”
The Panthers released Morgan in 2008, but he thought he wasn’t quite done. He signed with the Saints but couldn’t get healthy. “My mind was telling me one thing, but my body was telling me another,” Morgan said.
Morgan retired in 2008 from the Saints before playing a game that season. But in 2009, he briefly un-retired, trying to make it in New Orleans one more time when the Saints again expressed interest. Again, it didn’t work. Morgan got tired of the constant rehab and he retired again — this time for good.
When to say ‘enough’s enough’
That injury-plagued history shouldn’t obscure how good Morgan was when healthy. He was a Pro Bowler in 2004 and a hard-hitting force during the Panthers’ playoff seasons of 2003 and 2005, helping the team go 5-2 in those two postseasons. By the count of the Panthers’ defensive coaches, Morgan had an unbelievable 25 tackles in the 2003 Super Bowl that Carolina lost to New England — a startling number of tackles that only Kuechly has surpassed for Carolina, and only once.
The late Sam Mills was the first great Panthers’ inside linebacker — the long blue line extends from there to Morgan, Jon Beason, Thomas Davis and Kuechly. Mills — who was Morgan’s linebackers coach at one time — once told me that if injuries hadn’t ransacked Morgan’s career, he likely would have wound up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame (where Kuechly likely will be one day). That’s how good Morgan was.
Instead, Morgan had to win his Super Bowl ring (he got one as a front-office man for the Seattle Seahawks) another way. He’s 41 now. He has a wife he met in Charlotte and three kids, ages 11 to 14. His career as a talent evaluator has taken off, and the Panthers should bring him back to their organization; he’d be valuable.
Morgan has met Kuechly a few times, but they know each other only vaguely. He occasionally would evaluate Kuechly when he was scouting for other teams.
“What an amazing player he was,” Morgan said. “He was one of the easiest evaluations you’ll ever do. The instincts? Phenomenal. Football IQ? The best. You know how people talk about the bar — raising the bar and all that? Luke Kuechly was the bar. We look for linebackers like him every day.”
But, Morgan said, he also gets why Kuechly has left. Some day, everyone does.
“Eventually, it all just wears you down,” Morgan said, “and you have to say that enough’s enough.”
This story was originally published January 17, 2020 at 11:58 AM.
