Indianapolis Sports Radio Luck May Not Play Again

Is at that place any risk Andrew Luck ever returns to the NFL? Hither's what his former Colts teammates think

15 hours after he stammered through sobs inside a silent locker room, and so spilled his secret to the globe during an emotional, 25-minute news conference, Andrew Luck did the well-nigh Andrew Luck thing e'er. He slipped on his sunglasses, snapped on his helmet and went for a bike ride.

It had been a dark, a week, a career. Luck was drained. So he got out. He cleared his head. While his stunning decision was debated and dissected ⁠on talk shows and radio segments across the NFL universe — applauded by plenty, denounced by plenty more ⁠— Luck pedaled around downtown Indianapolis on a sticky summer afternoon, alone, hoping no i would recognize him. He was a 29-yr-old retiree. It was the first day of the rest of his life.

In the weeks that followed, he met with Colts' teammates, coaches and staffers, and they laughed and cried and reminisced. He cleaned out his locker and got rid of his cleats. Those who spoke with Luck and so say they saw a man at peace: In that location were no hints he was second-guessing himself, no indication he was doubting his decision. More than than anything, the human being was anxious to motion on.

"A weight was lifted," he'd admitted that night.

RELATED: Andrew Luck's retirement

So the Colts carried on. They had no choice. The backup asked to fill up Luck's stead, Jacoby Brissett, addressed the team 48 hours after The Retirement.

"I'm not gonna be Andrew," Brissett vowed. "I'one thousand not gonna be 12."

The season began 13 days later.

And in those showtime few weeks, Luck kept in bear upon with his onetime teammates, watching games closely, buzzing their phones with texts after wins, grabbing lunch with Brissett on off days, even visiting the team facility during the bye week. Afterward a while, life went back to normal on Due west 56th Street. It's the NFL. It e'er does.

Four months passed. A sterling start for the Colts soured down the stretch. The passing game vanished. Brissett's flaws were exposed. A 5-ii start wilted into a 7-9 stop, and with the budding frustration came a question, lingering in the back of plenty of people's minds, including some of his ex-teammates: Was there any risk at all ⁠— his body healed, his mind refreshed ⁠— Andrew Luck would ever consider returning to the NFL?

Heartbroken as he was that night, Colts possessor Jim Irsay refused to completely shut the door on the possibility back in August. Maybe the stunning reality he was being forced to swallow ⁠— the franchise quarterback he'd invested over $100 million in was retiring at the age of 29 ⁠— was nevertheless sinking in. Or maybe it was just blind promise.

But Irsay, eternal optimist that he is, seemed to be clinging to some chance, some belief, scant every bit information technology seemed.

"I don't dominion it out, because as quickly as this thing sort of descended on us, and as mysterious as it was coming upon us, it could leave the aforementioned style," Irsay said then, referring to Luck's calf-turned-ankle injury. "That's just a fact.

"We see Tiger Forest come up dorsum and win the Masters," Irsay connected. "Michael Jordan retired and unretired. He's (Luck) simply going to be 30 years former, (and) patently, he has to find his mode."

Fundamental to Luck's decision wasn't so much the hurting merely the process, a process he spent years trying, and failing, to climb from. He spent half his career in the preparation room, slogging through injuries to his shoulder, his kidney, his abdomen, his ribs, his calf and his ankle. It wore on him, and it beat out him down, and eventually, it robbed him of his love for the game. Football wasn't fun anymore. Football was hell.

And when he stared into the 2019 season, Luck saw the same cycle waiting for him: more pain, more rehab, more doubtfulness, more guilt. He'd made himself a promise later the nightmare that was 2016, when he threw for 4,240 yards with a partially torn labrum in his shoulder, missing practice weekly, grinding his way to Sundays: never again.

No affair what: never once again.

Did Colts quarterback Andrew Luck walk off the field for the final time on Aug. 24? Most of his teammates believe and so. (Brian Spurlock / U.s.a. Today Sports)

And here he was, three years later, "at the proverbial fork in the road," he called information technology that nighttime. His ankle wasn't healing, and then he walked away, and for those that know him well, he didn't look back.

"Part of my journey going forward," Luck said so, "will be figuring out how to get out of hurting."

The pertinent question now: What if, four months later, Luck has done that? What if the hurting'due south gone? What if the ankle'south healed and the itch to play over again creeps back?

Could any of his teammates run across him weighing a return to the NFL?

The short answer: Maybe. Simply perhaps.

"I think he loves the game of football game, and so I wouldn't be surprised if he did, but I couldn't give you a definitive answer on that," linebacker Anthony Walker said.

"Information technology definitely wouldn't surprise me if he never returned," tight end Mo Alie-Cox said. "But role of me thinks he will, but because he was in his prime when he retired.

"But it'd simply exist weird (if he did come back). Like, what the fuck? Jacoby'south here. They're good friends, and at that place's no way you can put Andrew Luck equally a backup quarterback. It would just be weird. What do you lot do?"

Added safe Malik Hooker: "Shit, I dunno. I would think information technology'due south possible because he'south however young. He's even so young, still in his prime number. But, hey, he'south got the money to never have to play again. I understand his decision. I've been through a lot of rehab and it's tiring."

Merely that'due south the affair: Information technology was never money that collection Luck, non to the NFL in the kickoff place, and not into retirement last summertime. The night his quarterback walked away, Irsay boasted that Luck was leaving "$400 to $500 million on the tabular array."

"He's saying, 'You know what, my integrity has to be there,' " Irsay said. "I have to look T.Y. (Hilton) in the centre. I take to look my teammates in the eye, look double-decker, await Chris (Ballard) in the center and say, 'I'm all in.' He just didn't feel at this time he could do that."

This decision was not one of impulse but careful thought, stirred past weeks and years of personal torment. When Luck revealed that dark that his only way out of the desperation was to "remove himself from football game," it didn't sound like a reprieve. It sounded permanent.

"I don't think he does the Brett Favre thing," Colts receiver Zach Pascal said this week.

No. Probably not. Luck weighed the motion for weeks, leaning on married woman Nicole and his parents for support, calling information technology the hardest decision of his life. The teammates who know him best, the ones who spoke with him then and remain in bear on at present, don't look Luck to reverse grade. Pose the question to them – tin can you lot see any scenario where he considers a return? – and they shoot downwards the possibility rather quickly.

"He retired for a reason, and so my gut would say no," said left tackle Anthony Castonzo, Luck's closest friend on the team.

"I don't recall so," offered tight cease Jack Doyle, some other close confidant. "From talking to him, no. He's having fun existence a dad."

(Luck and Nicole welcomed a baby daughter in Nov.)

"I talked to him a couple of weeks afterward it happened, and he sounded pretty content with the conclusion he'd made," offensive lineman Joe Haeg said. "In the terminate, nosotros all wanna practise what makes us the nearly happy. I think he did that."

Added running back Nyheim Hines: "Maybe in that location'southward a chance, but I don't call back so. I think he's washed. I call up he's happy. He made the decision that was best for him, and you accept to remember, he thinks differently than virtually people. He thinks in that, like, one percent group of people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Not like you or me."

When he's asked the same question, the teammate Luck called "the best football game role player I e'er played with" the nighttime he retired, T.Y. Hilton, paused and weighed the possibility.

"I dunno, man," he said after a heavy sigh. "I simply don't know."

Alie-Cox, who spent two seasons with Luck, laughed when he thought dorsum to the stupor of that nighttime. Information technology had to be unprecedented territory for an NFL squad: the players stood in a silent locker room after a preseason game, 15 days before the opener, listening to their 29-year-one-time franchise quarterback tell them he was walking away, just like that.

Most of them starting time heard the news during the game, equally fans voiced the frustrations, screaming downwardly at the Colts' sideline.

Then Alie-Cox remembers the conversations he used to have with an onetime teammate, third-string QB Phillip Walker, about the quirks that made Luck different than any teammate they ever played with.

"We used to joke, like two years before all this happened, that Andrew is just the blazon of person that was gonna retire out of nowhere and go hang out with his family," Alie-Cox said. "And then it happened, and we were similar, what the fuck? We were right? We were joking virtually it back so, just nosotros never actually thought it was gonna happen like that. Then it did.

"Human being," he continues, "I'm not gonna lie, sometimes I notwithstanding can't believe it did."

(Top photo of Jack Doyle and Andrew Luck: Frederick Breedon / Getty Images)

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Source: https://theathletic.com/1498197/2019/12/31/is-there-any-chance-andrew-luck-ever-returns-to-the-nfl-heres-what-his-former-colts-teammates-think/

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