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Us cube monkeys may find it easy to criticize Andrew Luck’s shocking retirement announcement at the tender age of 29, but the most severe injuries we’ve suffered on the job are paper cuts and diarrhea from Cheryl’s taco dip.
Here is a list of injuries Luck suffered in the NFL that contributed to Luck’s diminished enjoyment of the game and ultimately his retirement.
-Sprained shoulder (September 2015)
-Lacerated kidney & partially torn abdominal muscle (November 2015)
-Torn cartilage in ribs (January 2016)
-Concussion (November 2016)
-Shoulder surgery (January 2017)
-Put on IR for entire season (November 2017)
-Calf strain (March 2019)
Former punter and Luck teammate Pat McAfee appeared on ESPN’s Get Up this morning to offer some behind-the-scenes insight to the injuries that plagued the former number 1 overall pick and how he fought tirelessly to conceal them from the public.
Scroll to the 4:20 mark to hear McAfee’s answer to Mike Greenberg’s question about the irresponsible way the Colts surrounded him during the early stages of his career.
“It was abysmal. The only way to describe it is abysmal.”
“Every time you saw him get slobberknocked (!!) off his rocker, it was a scary situation. I know a lot of the guys who were friends with him that were on the offensive line and I was friends with a lot of guys that were on the offensive line, but at some point in his early years, we needed somebody to stand up and say, ‘I’m not going to let our once-in-a-generation, first pick of the NFL Draft quarterback continue to get slammed the way he does.'”
“Now, granted, because of his mental toughness that Bruce Arians just referred to, and his physical toughness, all he did was continue to get up, get up. But those of us who got a chance to see him in the training room and in the locker room after games, he was beat up on a very regular basis, but he never let anybody else really know about it.
…that’s why that guy was a warrior on the football field, and I think that injury to his shoulder, his kidney, everything he’s got going on, he made a decision that he wasn’t going to battle through another one of those injuries with himself, and he had to stick to it this year when this ankle injury started popping up.”
McAfee also went on to describe the droves of Colts fans booing Luck in the immediate wake of the news leaking as a “regrettable decision” by a loud minority who had a couple adult sodas. He does sympathize with Colts fans who were told two years ago that Andrew Luck was coming back only for him to sit the entire season. They were told the same thing this year, only to have him retire.
Empathizing with Luck’s motives for retiring and being pissed about it don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
[h/t The Big Lead]