Luck hopes healthy offseason leads to better results on field

INDIANAPOLIS» Andrew Luck spent three offseasons fighting his way back from injuries. Now he can reap the reward.

After returning to the field, making it back to the playoffs, regaining his Pro Bowl form and collecting The Associated Press NFL comeback player of the year award, a healthy Luck now intends to take a rare and well-deserved break from football.

“I’ll be honest, I probably won’t throw for a while,” he said before cleaning out his locker. “There will be tweaks, there will be changes to what I do (this offseason) but all of it is geared to one, make me as happy as possible and two, set me up to improve as a quarterback and improve as a person.”

How Luck will spend his downtime is unclear.

Peyton Manning broke the monotony with hunting trips. Brett Favre worked on his ranch. Tom Brady won a Super Bowl after changing last year’s offseason routine to spend more time with his family and less on football. They all learned throwing more balls doesn’t necessarily make a better quarterback.

Matt Hasselbeck, a threetime Pro Bowler who backed up Favre and Luck during his 17-year career, became a believer. So after hearing a story about Manning meeting a former U.S. president one offseason, Hasselbeck accepted an offer from assistant coach Clyde Christensen to spend time with a Navy admiral.

“He talked to us in our quarterback meeting one day about protecting the football because we’d had some issues and he used this analogy of what they tell Top Gun pilots,” Hasselbeck said. “It was basically that you have this great plane you get to fly and it does not belong to you. It belongs to the government, it belongs to the people. Clyde said we should take the admiral up on spending some time with him. So I did that one offseason.

“That’s an example of something that’s not necessarily X’s and O’s but it’s a form of leadership training or just working on you and if you’re working on you, you’re improving everything about you.”

Luck’s good year came with 16 starts for the first time since 2014.