NIGHTMARE SEASON FUELS LUCK
QB can’t wait to begin second phase of career
It was second-and-9, and the best defense in football was licking its chops across the line of scrimmage in the fourth quarter of a tied game.
Then that Denver Broncos defense was coming. Andrew Luck looked, pump-faked, looked and pump-faked again, then ran. He made it 4 yards before a pair of Broncos folded his 6-4 frame like a lawn chair.
“Oh, did he get hit,” the radio play-by-play man grumbled.
“You’ve got to be a tough guy to get up from that,” the analyst added.
But being a tough guy, Luck got up as he did always did, threw a touchdown pass on the next play, then gritted his teeth and lumbered off the field.
He played the rest of the fourth quarter, beat the best defense in football and delivered the biggest win of the season oblivious to the fact he had suffered an injury doctors typically only see after car crashes.
Then he woke up the next morning and noticed blood in his urine.
The verdict: a lacerated kidney and a partially torn abdominal muscle. The time frame: two to six weeks. He refused to believe it and got a second opinion.
No matter. The scans weren’t lying. This was a vital organ. This was serious.
“At first, I was like, ‘I’ll be back. I’m an athlete, and athletes heal quicker,’ ” Luck recalls. “But as the day wore on and the week wore on, it just sort of hit me: ‘This is going to take a lot longer than I thought.’ You’re disappointed. After that game, it just stunk.”
Luck is clear about one thing: He knows he stunk long before the Broncos’ Danny Trevathan and Vance Walker laid the punishing hit on him that ended his season two months early. He was never himself in 2015. He made awful decisions. He made awful throws. He was a mess. The Colts were, too.