Luke Kuechly has left a trail of small acts of kindness, and large ones

Kuechly does have, for lack of a better word, a soft spot for the kids.

Long snapper JJ Jansen still has the photograph from when he and Kuechly began to get much closer as friends after a year as teammates.

“The first picture I have with him is actually not me with him, but him holding my oldest son, Luke,” Jansen said. “He’s holding him, but it’s terrible ball security, terrible kid security, kind of off the hip. “And he’s talking about how he’s holding a baby; he clearly hasn’t held a baby in 20 years, as bad as this was.

“So we take a quick picture of Luke and Luke, and my wife pulled him right back. But before she grabbed him, he told me, ‘This is so good. I haven’t held a baby in a long time. I remember back when my little brother Henry was a baby, I used to push the soft spot on the top of his head all the time.’ And our Luke instantly got swiped right back up by his mom.

“So that’s my first vivid memory of Luke, but the random acts of kindness he’s always offering for sure. He is always offering to do things. Now, in my particular case, I don’t know that I’ve ever taken him up on all the things he has certainly offered, because you’re afraid he’s going to poke your kids in the soft spot. Thankfully they’re all grown through those phases.”

Other than putting them in pediatric danger (and relax, both Luke Jansen and Dr. Henry Kuechly, the second-year resident, turned out OK), Jansen said Kuechly was, as you might expect, great with kids.

“He is quick to gravitate to all of our children,” Jansen said. “He’s quick to play games with our kids; they’re playing Monopoly, they’re doing homework. He’d sit down, and I don’t know if he was doing the math homework with them, but he was talking about it.

“Or if the kids are goofing off in the living room and, and maybe one of my kids gives a smart aleck remark back to my wife or me, he’ll say ‘Don’t talk like that, Tom Kuechly would whoop my butt if I said that.’ But he’s like their big brother, he’s like their uncle, but also like another parent in a non-parenting-your-children way.”