Happily, Kuechly action was brief
Miami coach calls Panthers’ LB one the NFL’s smartest.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It was just a preseason game for the Dolphins and Panthers on Friday night, so the good news for Miami coach Adam Gase was he didn’t see much of Luke Kuechly.
Kuechly, a four-time AllPro, is simultaneously one of Gase’s favorite and least favorite players in the NFL. He faced Kuechly only twice before, once with Denver in 2012 and last season with the Dolphins, but that was enough to see how incredibly frustrating he is.
“He’s one of the few players that you go against that you might call plays, and you know he knows,” Gase said this week. “And he can watch and see how everybody’s stance is. He listens to what the quarterback is saying. He picks up on little things that a lot of players don’t and he uses that information and processes it fast and can get the other guys on board.”
The Dolphins ran into a bit of that in last year’s 45-21 loss at Carolina, when they managed 313 yards of total offense. Kuechly had six tackles and an interception that night.
It wasn’t as much of an issue Friday given that neither team played its starters for long. Miami kept Ryan Tannehill in for one series in last week’s preseason opener against the Buccaneers.
Gase was probably happy it was a short night for Kuechly, too. And that the team’s won’t meet in this year’s regular season.
“When you’ve got a guy that’s basica ll y saying, ‘They’re go in g left,’ or, ‘They’re going right,’ or, ‘It’s a pass,’ or, ‘It’s a run,’ that’s frustrating as a playcaller because you’re at a disadvantage,” he said. “He has just an unbelievable ability to put his guys in great position.”