As a rookie, Luke Kuechly entered a linebackers room at a crossroads

“Well, I’ll say this: Luke’s rookie year, we weren’t that good,” quarterback Cam Newton said. “So when the defense took the field, I kept hearing the crowd boo. I’m like, ‘Bro, that was a good play. Nobody liked that play?’ It didn’t dawn on me until midway through the season they weren’t booing. They were saying LUUUUUUUUUKE, and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I had no idea. I was so embarrassed to say it, but I’m saying to myself, ‘Dang, that’s pretty cool.'”

But to Smith’s point, a lot of things were happening at the same time.

Making it easier was the fact that of all Beason’s gifts, he had the ability to sniff plays out too. So when Rivera came up to praise him after an early game, he could sense something shift.

“Ron goes, ‘You know what. You proved it to me. You, you showed me that you’re one of the best mike linebackers I’ve ever seen. You can play it,'” Beason recalled. “And it wasn’t him saying he was wrong, it was just saying that he had this idea of what it would be if I went back outside.

“And obviously the injuries kind of derailed that, right away, but I was for it. I have these pictures of the three of us, Luke and Thomas and myself, and it was like all the Biblical names, and it was a thing.”

But with Davis still working his way back, and the perfectly solid Anderson available, the plan was to use Davis as a situational player early in the year. Plus, knee and shoulder injuries limited Beason to just four games that season, as his body began to betray him the same way Morgan’s had to open the door for him five years earlier. So that Biblical linebackers room never got the chance to write the story they might have dreamed.

And while Beason’s a prideful person, he was at peace with the move outside. He remembered talking to Rivera during the pre-draft process in 2007, the former Bears defensive coordinator talking to him about playing the Lance Briggs role, the same weakside job Kuechly opened the season at.

But for all the other things Jon Beason was great at, he had two working eyes and could see what was happening when Kuechly went to the middle.