For Kuechly, a second shot at the finalist list could prove fruitful, after many thought he deserved induction in his first year.<\/p>\n
In eight seasons, Kuechly was a seven-time All-Pro, a seven-time Pro Bowler, earned defensive rookie of the year honors, defensive player of the year, and went to one Super Bowl. He was named to the All-Decade team for the 2010s.<\/p>\n
It’s a nearly identical resume to Hall of Fame linebacker Patrick Willis, who was enshrined in 2024 in his third year of eligibility. (Willis also played eight years, made the All-Decade team, and was a six-time All-Pro. He did not win a defensive player of the year.)<\/p>\n
Kuechly was also recognized as one of the best in the game, practically his entire career. By making an All-Pro team in seven of his eight seasons (87.5 percent, and the only year he didn’t, he was defensive rookie of the year), he has the third-highest percentage of All-Pros to years played in NFL history, trailing just Barry Sanders (10-of-10, 100.0 percent) and Jim Brown (8-of-9, 88.9). The guys he’s immediately ahead of on that list are Reggie White (13-of-15, 86.7) and Anthony Munoz (11-of-13, 84.6). However you define elite, that’s what Kuechly was during the time he played.<\/p>\n
Among the 15 finalists, his seven All-Pro mentions are tied for the most, along with Yanda, who played 13 seasons to Kuechly’s eight. Kuechly and Suggs are the only defensive players of the year on the list, while Brees won two offensive player of the year awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Kuechly, a second shot at the finalist list could prove fruitful, after many thought he deserved induction…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[38807,64,63,596,1347,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-380730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-app-news","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-latest-news","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}