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BOSTON COLLEGE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 21, 2016Luke KuechlyDoug FlutieBoston, Massachusetts LUKE KUECHLY: I'm excited to be back. This is the first time I've been back for a game since I left. You walk back on campus, it's very nostalgic. You walk around, you walk through the quad, you remember all the time you spent walking through there going to the Fulton for classes. Then you walk down to lower campus and the dining hall. Edmonds is gone where I spent a lot of time. It was a special place. I'm glad I had the opportunity to come here. This weekend is special. When I was at school, we always had summer workouts in the stadium. You're running sprints. The things that's always stayed the same in that stadium were the Mike Ruth and Doug Flutie jerseys up there. You thought always one day maybe you could be up there on the wall with those guys. I'm very honored to have the opportunity to be up there with these guys. I want to say thank you to BC, as a football organization as well as a school, for giving me the opportunity to not only come to school here but to play here. It's an honor to be here. I'm very happy to be back. This was a special place for me. It's a great honor. DOUG FLUTIE: First I'd like to congratulate Luke. It's fantastic. What he stands for and what this school stands for, he exemplifies. It is a special place. I mean, I have so many memories. Every time I'm back on campus, I'm back on campus a lot, it's exciting for me to be able to get back for a game. But to be able to get back here for Luke as he's getting his number retired is very special to me. I watched a lot of his games because he went through school about the same time my nephew Billy did. I was in the stands a lot watching him. I think the number one thing that makes me proud to be a BC alum, when guys like Luke come through. What they did at school, what they do off the field, and now continuing in his NFL career, it's been amazing. I'm just very happy to be here for Luke, for BC, and to be a part of this. I told him, I'd just sit on the side with some pom-poms and cheer for him. But we're sitting up there. With that, we'll open it up for questions. Q. Doug, has it become impossible for a defensive player to win the Heisman right now? DOUG FLUTIE: Especially this day and age. Obviously it's not impossible. Very improbable. Unless you're playing both side of the ball and you make some huge plays on offense as well. Maybe you're a punt returner as well, then you jump over there and you have an six interceptions, five fumble recoveries, lead the nation in tackles. It's become such an offensive game, spread them out, sling it around, score 50 points. The offense is always getting all the attention and the defense does all the work. LUKE KUECHLY: Concur (smiling). Q. Luke, talk a little bit about who influenced your decision to come to BC and who were some of your biggest influences while you were here before you left? LUKE KUECHLY: You know, growing up in Cincinnati, I went to Jesuit High School. Obviously BC is Jesuit. When I was looking to get recruited, we had a bunch of guys up here from St. Xavier High School. Nick Larkin was here and Alex Albright was here. Those guys obviously went to the same high school as me. They both came here, they both loved it and played well in football. They were some guys that I could bounce ideas off of. I could ask them questions: What do you like? What do you not like? Do you think I'd fit in? The academics were very attractive to me. I thought being in Boston was cool. My parents always talked about, You need to go to a school that's going to provide you something after football. BC has done that. While at school, I think I had some good people here to help me out. Player-wise, obviously Mark Herzlich was great. Mike Morrissey was a linebacker that was good to me. He kind of showed me how to do everything, whether it was around campus, where to eat, where to wash your clothes, laundry, how do you get down to Cleveland Circle, stuff like that. Then Wes Davis. Wes played safety for us, great player, even better person. Really showed you how to be successful playing football. We'd sit up there in the meeting room behind you. I'd watch film with Wes. He'd show me different things. His locker was right next to mine. He treated you like a young guy. Once you earned his respect, it was all good. I had a guy named Bill McGovern that was here. He was our linebacker coach and D coordinator. Obviously football-wise, he was very intelligent. He understood the game front and back. He knew what we were doing. He knew what the other team was doing. That part was great. But what makes a good coach is does he connect with guys off the field. He knew every guy on the team. He knew what they were doing. He knew what classes they were taking. He knew about their families. To have a coach that took a personal approach to each individual guy is important. I still talk to him. I talked to him last night. I talk to him quite a bit. He was great for me. He was great for all the guys on our team because he's a coach but at the same time he's a guy you could go up and talk to. He'll listen to what you say and he's usually got good advice for you. Q. Is still surreal the path you've taken from what you were able to do at BC, the awards you've won, the career in the NFL, having your jersey retired? LUKE KUECHLY: You come in with expectations and goals. I think they're two different things. You expect maybe, like you said, you get redshirted, but your goal is to play well. For me, like I said, I had a lot of good people around me. I was kind of pushed into that role when I first got here. Obviously Mark's situation was going on. McLaughlin got hurt, coming off on injury I should say, a couple of guys get banged up. When I was getting recruited, I thought I was going to be way low on the depth chart. I came in and four guys got hurt and couldn't play, so I got pushed right in. For me, luckily I had those guys like Coach McGovern and Wes and Mike Morrissey, Mark Herzlich that showed me how to do things the right way. That helped me out. Even going into the NFL, it's kind of the same way. We got a guy in Carolina named Thomas Davis that's a special guy. Just a good dude. He's a great player, a good person. He shows you how to do things the right way. A guy named Jon Beason, too. Pro Bowler. Played with Carolina forever. Good dudes that were good at football and showed you how to get things done both on and off the field. The two things that are similar between here and the NFL was I had guys that helped me out. That's the biggest thing I think I'm thankful for, is those guys provided me that opportunity as well as helped me through it. Q. Luke, some guys have incredible ability out there. One of the things that characterizes your game on Saturday and Sunday is your motor, your ability not to give up on plays. How is that something you're able to do? Is that something you can pass along to BC players now? LUKE KUECHLY: I think that's one thing that BC stresses, is effort and want to, working hard. I think it kind of encompasses all those things. If you're dogging it, Bill McGovern let you know. When you take a play off and everyone on the whole team can see it, that's the worst feeling. You don't want to be the guy that's taking it off and running slow. Maybe you could have picked up a fumble or you could have made a tackle that would have prevented a big play. You want to be around the ball. You want to make plays. That's how you do it, by playing hard. We at Carolina are the same way. If you get popped on the video or on the tape of slowing down, guys let you know about it. Thomas will let you know about it, too. Bill McGovern did it here. If you weren't playing hard, he let you know. Not just let you know, he can tell you to do something. If you don't understand why, that's an issue. He made sure that guys always understood why he wanted you to do something. The 'why' really always came down to, You're not the only guy on the field and people are relying on you to do your job. If you take a play off, it's kind of a slap in the face to the other guys on the team that are trying hard to play well and make plays and win games. If you're the guy that's slouching off and being a bum, you're kind of letting those guys down. Q. I know the circumstances are really good, but it couldn't have been the plan for it to take this long for you to get back to campus, right? LUKE KUECHLY: I've been back a few times. This is the first time for a game. Based on how bye weeks line up or whether we're home or away, it kind of depends on that. I came back for school. I came back maybe a year or two ago. Then this will be my third or fourth time back up here. But the first time for a game. I went to a game in North Carolina, it was against the Tar Heels a couple years ago. Sometimes it's hard for you to line up with your bye week with an open date for these guys. Q. Doug, just a thought on all the honors you've had in your career. Looking back on it now, what does it mean to have your number retired here? Luke, what will it mean for you to be amongst the players like Doug? DOUG FLUTIE: Luke touched on it. Your number is up there. All the players that come through here look up and see it. You take a lot of pride in that, pride of putting your mark on a program or having your name affiliated with a program, to let it live on a little bit. I don't know. I had tunnel vision back then. Whenever all these awards were being thrown at you or honors were being cast on you, the significance of it didn't resonate to me until years later. It's just such an honor to have the number hanging out there, knowing that years down the road, even when I'm gone, that it's up there. It's a pretty cool thing. LUKE KUECHLY: I would agree kind of with what Doug said about the tunnel vision. When you're in it, you don't notice it as much. I would kind of draw that comparison to the time at BC. You don't ever miss something till it's gone. It's kind of like my time at BC. You loved it while you were in it, but you don't realize how much you'll miss it till you're gone. It's the tunnel vision I'd like to think that Doug was talking about. Right now it's a cool deal. I take a lot of pride in it. It's a great honor. It's really neat. I think as time progresses, the cooler it will get, the more it will mean. Like you said, it's always up there. Hopefully they keep it up, they don't take it down (smiling). DOUG FLUTIE: Until a big recruit comes in, wants the number (laughter). Q. Luke, when did you finish up school and how long did that take you? When did you graduate? LUKE KUECHLY: After my rookie year, I came back. I took I think four or five classes. After 2012, spring of '13 maybe. Then I finished in I think '14 or '15. So it took me two off-seasons I think to complete it. I had to come back here and take five classes at school. I was able to finish the other ones online. I think it took two off-seasons to get it finished. Q. Can you say why that was important to you? LUKE KUECHLY: Because my mom told me to do it (smiling). That's all you got to say. As long as she's happy, you're good. Once she's mad, it's trouble. Q. Luke, when you see dominant linebackers, guys like Matt Milano, Connor Strachan, what kind of memories does it bring back for you? LUKE KUECHLY: Those guys play hard. Matt Milano will be a guy that will have an opportunity to play. He's physical. He runs. He hits. He's strong. Strachan is the same way. It's fun to watch those guys. You kind of can live through them a little bit in that sense of just how they play. They play with great effort and enthusiasm. They want to be good. You can tell that they pay attention and football is important to them. That's something that I always look for in guys, is not necessarily talent or ability, but more is football important to you. If it's important to you, you try hard, you give good effort, you prepare. I think that's the mark of a good football player. There's plenty of guys out there, Doug will agree, that have tremendous talent and could be the best at their position. But if they don't want to be there, then the other guy's going to win. That's one thing I see in a lot of guys that play here, is great effort, great approach to the game. They play hard and it matters to them. That's what you want to see, and you see it in those guys. Q. What was it like to be on campus, being in the NFL? LUKE KUECHLY: It was the same. Q. You could move around? LUKE KUECHLY: I lived in Edmonds, just like I did when I was here. That was the best. Back with all the guys again. I missed that part of being at school, just going back to the dorms, being with all your friends. That was cool. That was probably my favorite part about being back, was being around all the guys. Q. Luke, could you talk a little bit about the culture of the football program when you were part of it. Can you talk about that a little bit. How did that culture help shape you into the player you are? The one thing that's very apparent about watching you play is you're extremely driven. It's a standard that you play with. Anybody that sees you play knows that about you. Describe what the Boston College culture meant to you, how it impacted you, what drives you? LUKE KUECHLY: When I first got here, we had the fifth-year class. The big guys that stuck out to me were McLaughlin and Matt Tennant. You kind of worked down from them. There's that tier. Billy Flutie was here. Wes Davis, Mark. Mike Morrissey. Those guys. Alex Albright. Those guys really set the standard of what was acceptable here. All those guys, they had lots of things in common. They played hard. They did things the right way. They had great effort. They were tough. They loved BC. I think that's one thing, when those guys left, that still stuck around. It was passed down to the next group, the next group, even our group. I always talk about people that help you get places. Those guys that I talked about set that standard of, when you show up, it's time to work, you play hard, you play tough, you play through stuff. When it gets hard, that's when you start playing. We were just a tough group of dudes that played hard. It was kind of epitomized by obviously Mark with his cancer. It didn't hold him back. When you see a guy like that come to practice and go to meetings, the dude's going through chemo, he has a port and stuff. Obviously this stuff isn't really difficult if he's doing that. McLaughlin came off an Achilles. When I first got here, he would walk stadium stairs with a sandbag. I'd never seen somebody do that before. Those guys set the standard of what BC football was in my mind. It trickled its way down. We were very lucky to have guys like that that were just tough football players in every sense of the word. They were mean, they played hard, they gave great effort, good to young guys, treated them right. Not to say there wasn't any jabbing going on. We had fun. They did a good job of setting a standard of what was acceptable in here for the culture for what they wanted this team to be. Q. Doug, can you build on that and go further back? We talk about the more recent classes. How have you seen the culture develop since 1984 when you were here, all the way through the '90s, into today? DOUG FLUTIE: One thing I love that Luke said is that the guys that played here cared about BC. BC was important to them. That rings true with our entire class. We had a class, there was a coaching change. We had a coach from Maine, Jack Bicknell, come down and get the head job. He's scrambling around trying to get players. A bunch of us were Ivy League or IAA type guys that got an opportunity. It was a high-character class. It was all the things Luke is talking about: guys that were driven, guys that worked hard, guys that did everything the right way. We weren't the most talented. At the collegiate level, you can get by on that, the hard work end of it, as long as you have a decent ability. That's what we kind of started to build then. There's been periods throughout where the team has done exceptionally well. We don't always have all the NFL prospect guys. We don't have the 4.340 wide receivers. But we had some hard-nosed guys that would line up and hit you. We have had offensive linemen over the years, from a football standpoint compete with anyone. Then they care about Boston College. They're character-type kids that are getting their education, graduating. Graduation rate at Boston College. We're always over 90% and in the top five in the country. That's important to me as an alumnus. That's where I look. I look, as Luke was saying, the guys, Boston College was important to them and their lives. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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