The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Luck Episode 3: The Arrival

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

In Episode 3 of LUCK, host Zak Keefer explores the early years of Andrew Luck’s NFL career — and what made him such a singular personality in NFL history. A quarterback who led seven fourth-quarter comebacks as a rookie? Who read books on Nelson Mandela in his free time? Who complimented defensive linemen after they’d driven him into the turf? Who tore up the Colts’ defense in practice so badly that Bruce Arians wore all black the next day to bust their chops because Luck had, as Arians put it, “killed them”? Voices include Arians, Chuck Pagano, D’Qwell Jackson, Robert Mays, Mike Sando and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With the first pick of the draft, the Indianapolis Colts select quarterback University of Tennessee, Peyton Manning. Bruce Ariens was there in 1998, when Peyton Manning showed up as a rookie, eager to lift the Colts from the league seller. I'm really excited about what's ahead and just proud that the Colts put their faith in me. I'm looking forward to the challenge of getting the program going, and it's a really exciting time right now. And Ariens was there 14 years later when Andrew Luck showed up. And all he had to do was replace the greatest player in franchise history. Anxious to get started. You know, we want to be part of the team.

You want to get started and get going. And, you know, can't wait to be in a new locker room with a bunch of great guys. The coach saw a lot of similarities between the two. The day he showed up. Very similar to Peyton. When Peyton showed up the first day, it was his football team. And Andrew showed up. And it was like that day, that day he got all the respect to the defense.

Pretty much anyone connected to the Colts. Teammates, coaches, executives, those in the media, recognized right away that Andrew Luck was special. Andrew Love, I was like, man, I remember just seeing him throw his first ball, first practice. It just looked different. I remember Reggie Wayne getting interviewed saying like, hey, I'm fortunate enough to play with two Hall of Fame quarterbacks. Peyton Manning and then Andrew Luck, who was like his second week with the Colts. I thought that he was headed to the Hall of Fame.

I really did. I felt it took Peyton what, seven years to win a playoff game? This guy won a playoff game in his second year. It was honestly just if you take the reporter hat off, it was fun as hell. I mean, there's nothing better than just a quarterback who can make magic in the fourth quarter. And he did it over and over and over again. This is Luck, Episode 3, The Arrival. In the summer of 2012, Andrew Luck was 22 years old.

Luck would lead a much different Colts team than Manning had the last time he'd worn the horseshoe. The Colts were now in full rebuild mode. During the offseason, they'd cut longtime stalwarts, Dallas Clark, Gary Brackett, and Melvin Bullet. Jeff Saturday was in Green Bay. Manning was in Denver. I am thrilled to be here. I'm looking forward to meeting my new teammates and doing everything I can to help this franchise win another Super Bowl. Boltz would end up having to start six rookies, including five on offense.

Arians, now a Super Bowl winning head coach, was Luck's first. offensive coordinator in the NFL. But when you look at, we had six rookies playing on offense. Both tight ends are running back, a tackle, a center. Everybody's a rookie. And one game, I think we had seven rookies, and we win. That doesn't happen. But luck was never just a rookie quarterback.

He was the face of a franchise from the moment he arrived, the bridge to a new era. It was Jim Ursay, the owner who tearfully said goodbye to Manning the previous March, who pulled Luck aside before his first training camp. You don't have to fill Peyton's shoes, the owner-ta. told him. And Luck never forgot that. There's not a lot that fazes him. I think he understood. And he came in with the right attitude, which is, I'm not Peyton. I'm not going to beat Peyton. That's Bob Cravitts, aka Andrew Luck's agent, as Manning once called him. The Indianapolis columnist who'd been the first in town to predict the Colts would move on from Peyton Manning

the previous spring in order to draft Andrew Luck. I think he's very self-assured. I think he's very comfortable in his own skin. I think he understood what he was walking into. He's, he's He handled it about as well as anybody can handle it. He didn't try to be Peyton. He didn't try to be a media darling. In fact, his first year, he didn't do any ads. You know, Robert Griffin, and this is no slight on him, but Robert Griffin that first year was doing all kinds of ads.

And, you know, Andrew decided not to. Andrew and Wilson decided that he wanted to establish himself as a quarterback in the NFL before he did anything. In fact, Luck made a conscious decision. early on, he'd hold off on any national ads until he started producing on the field. He left millions on the table. And when I asked him about it, he didn't seem to care that much. We turned down more things than I can remember his agent and uncle, Will Wilson, once told me. I think he understood his situation. And I thought he handled it about as well as you can handle it.

I've never met anyone like Andrew. Never. And that's a compliment. De Quelle Jackson, a longtime NFL linebacker would spend three seasons as Lux teammate. It's a compliment. I know a ton of really smart people. that a lot smarter than me, I've always felt like Andrew was given, this guy given ability, but he was much more than just a game, much more than a game of football,

much more than just, you know, winning a ton of Super Bowls and having everyone remember him by his arm strength and arm talent and the teams that he was associated with. Andrew never struck me as that guy. As crazy as that may sound, you know, I only identified as a football player.

And I submerged myself within, in my craft because I wasn't the tallest, fast, as strongest, and all these other things. So I had to pivot and realize, okay, how can I maximize my earning potential? How can I just, you know, maximize my career? Andrew never felt that pressure. And I think that's what helped him in big games and keep that calmness about him. Luck torched the Colts defense in his first mini camp. I'll never forget the story Bruce Ariens told.

He loved what he was seen from his young quarterback. So he decided to take the opportunity to needle some of the team's defensive veterans. So, yeah, Andrew comes in and we just light the defense up. And the DB's just a stretch in a circle. So I found all the black stuff I could find, black shoes, black socks, black shorts. And I walked right through him. Gerard Powers, coach. What's up with all the black?

Looks good, man. I said, I'm going to tell general. Really? Who's? The y'alls. Because Andrew kills you's motherfuckers yesterday. And they just fell out laughing. Ariens designed his entire scheme around his rookie quarterback's prodigious skill set.

Luck wasn't just accurate. He had a cannon for an arm. And Ariens loved seven-step drops and deep downfield throws. His motto was simple. No risk it, no biscuit. Nobody likes to throw the ball deep as much as BA loves to chuck it down the field. Chuck Begano was in his first few months as the Colts head coach. And now he's got a guy that certainly can do it at a high rate, very, very accurate,

dropping dimes on the guys. And, you know, you remember that story about him coming out in that mini-camp and changing plays at the line of scrimmage? And, you know, we've had all those other guys there, all those rookies that we drafted on offense, you know, Dwayne and Kobe and T.Y and so forth. You know, he's checking out of things and changing plays and making audibles. And nobody's ever heard that before. And Andrews's never been there. So everybody's just kind of scratching their head going, you know, where the hell did this come from? How did this happen?

You know, is this guy really this bright? It's really hard being an NFL quarterback. Like really hard. It's even harder being the NFL quarterback who replaces Peyton Manning. But even in the face of that intense spotlight, Pagano saw in his rookie quarterback a player who was ready to lead a locker room full of grown men. He was a winner and he brought the best out of everybody. But because he was so humble and he was so talented and so smart, I mean, you would never know that.

Anybody in a locker room that's been on, you know, any team of any sort, you know, all you want, want is your teammates, especially your best ones, you know, to be your best leaders and your best players and your hardest worker. And that's what, that's what he was. I mean, going where he went, the number one overall pick and coming out of Stanford with all the accolades that he had earned and all the honors that he had received, you know, just to come in and be the, you know, first guy in the building, the last guy to leave, strike up a conversation with everybody, treat everybody, you know, the same. It didn't matter if you were, you know, a veteran guy like Reggie, you know, coming back for whatever season that was and then, you know, a rookie.

I mean, you just had to respect and admire with all his greatness and all his talents. He was just, he was just one of the guys. The players and the coaches, they took to luck immediately, drawn to this goofy architecture major, who when he got on the field flipped a switch and become the fiercest competitor of all of them. He would never belittle anybody or try to tear anybody down. But if he had to have a tough conversation, he wasn't afraid to have those conversations. You know, and he always made sure that he was out front doing everything, you know, so that you could have those conversations. Because if you're not willing to work and put the time in, you can't have those.

And obviously he did that. But he wasn't afraid to have those conversations. Arians literally threw everything at luck and the 22-year-old took it in stride. Peter King, now of NBC Sports, was covering the NFL for Sports Illustrated at the time. He remembers speaking with people all over the league who were blown away by Luck's maturation. There were a lot of people who I knew pretty well who basically just thought that he was a 50-year-old man in terms of intelligence and just knowledge about everything. And they were on the bus before the first game that Andrew Luck ever played. It was at Chicago.

And they were on the bus on the way to Soldier Field from the hotel. And Andrew Luck started talking about, hey, cool, look, there's the field museum or whatever the museum was. I think it was the field museum. Just talking about things that two and a half hours before your first game, you're not supposed to be talking about. But that was how much it was, you know, his life was just not totally ruled by football. The Colts lost that opener to the Bears 41, 21. And a few weeks later, they were one and two heading into a week four by. when the organization was hit with stunning news.

Pagano had been diagnosed with leukemia. It's been a, you know, very difficult week. Colt's owner Jim Mersey announcing the news. We did have the coach go in, get fully evaluated on the bruising and his fatigue. The conclusion came down that he did have leukemia. Pagano would spend the next few months undergoing chemo at the IU Health Simon Cancer Center in downtown Indianapolis. If he returned it all that year, the doctor said, it wouldn't come until the very end of the regular season.

The no-risket, no-biscuit Bruce Ariens was given the keys as interim coach. And what happened next was nothing short of astonishing. It was such a fairy tale season that Chuck being sick and those guys went in for him. Andrew was every week was the story. The best one was Green Bay. You know, the first game Chuck's sick. We miss a blitz. And the dude just creams him.

And I thought he was done. I thought he was out. He gets us, nice hit, dude. Like, I said, dude, he gets up next day. And we score in the last play of the game, beat him really, like 17-point underdogs. Again, Reggie Wayne to the top.

We're going to continue to point out. Where is he at? There he is. And beat him the first game, and then Chuck got the game ball. That was probably the biggest thing ever. I could be proud of the guys in all my life. Now, Chuck was coaching his ass off.

No, we did it for him. The win over the Packers was a major turning point. From there, the Colts ripped off nine wins in 12 weeks. Luck became a bona fide star. He immediately showed how clutch he was, leading seven fourth quarter comebacks that season, the most ever by a rookie quarterback. The most ridiculous one came in Detroit.

The Colts were down two scores with a little over three minutes left in the game. Andrew, if we could keep a couple, close. He was going to win it in the last two minutes. The Detroit game is amazing. He throws a pick. He comes back and he's going crazy on the sidelines. You guys stop him. I'll score. You guys stop him. We'll score again.

Defense stops him. He sees Levin Brazil for a touchdown. Defense stops him. He goes down and scores last play the game. Final seconds. Luck steps. Luck. A little flip. Touchdown. Has shocked the lions.

And just he willed his way to win. That's what Brady has. That's what Peyton had. That's what Ben had. But Andrew had it in a different way. Kravitz was in Detroit covering the game that day. And in the postgame locker room, he ran into Colts General Manager Ryan Grickson. I saw Ryan Grickson in the locker room after that game. And he just walked over to me. And he said, can you believe that freaking throw? Can you believe that freaking throw? He didn't say freaking. But that, that's when I knew,

holy crap, you know, this guy's, this is a generational talent. I mean, to think that they went 11 and 5 with a completely rebuilt team that first year. Kravitz is right. Nobody, nobody, nobody saw the Colts going 11 and 5 that season. It was a remarkable record for a team that was in a rebuild and had lost its coach to cancer for 12 games. Pagano, healthy once again, would return for a week 17 win over Houston. But a week later, the miracle season ended as the Colts fell 24 to 9 in the wildcard round in Baltimore. It was time to scrap the rebuild. The Colts were coming, and luck was the biggest reason why.

Mike Sando, now of the athletic, was covering the league for ESPN at the time. He did. In the absence of the great support around them, I think that's how all the top quarterbacks are measured. Is your team winning? And if you remove that one piece, would the whole thing collapse? And we saw that happen with Peyton Manning. I mean, they went from being a competitive team. you'd have to look and see what their Vegas win total was that year that they ended up playing Curtis Painter instead.

But it was probably double figure your wins. They were probably one of the favorites to get to the Super Bowl or in the playoffs, whatever. And you remove that one guy and you're picking number one overall. I think to then plug in Andrew Luck, they were suddenly a competitive playoff team in those early years. It was you instantly knew again that you had one of those unique players. But even as the winds piled up, there was something simmering beneath the search. surface. An unease within the building that Luxeis style was too aggressive, too reckless. Same as he did at Stanford, he refused to let a play die. He relished the contact and he had little interest in

sliding. What made him great also made him a risk, and the issue would only intensify in the years to come. God bless, B.A., that offense is not built for a team with no offensive line and a quarterback who is completely and utterly unafraid. Robert Mays, who'd written about, Lux's impact on the Stanford program for Grantland remembers watching him early in his Colts run, being awed by Lux ability yet unnerved by the punishment he was taking. That was part of the problem is that you had this style of play that had this guy, was like, I'm going to hold onto it, I love taking hits, I love the physicality of the game, and it starts to create this world where it becomes untenable over time.

They're good because he is this otherworldly quarterback prospect, one of those few, few guys who just by virtue of him being on the field makes you relevant and competitive. Those guys come along so rarely where context ceases to matter. It's like, I'm here so you can't ignore us. And that's what the Colts were early on under Andrew Luck, but that kind of overlooks all these underlying factors that ultimately became a big, big problem over time. In Luck's second year in the league, the Colts again went 11 and 5, proving his rookie campaign was no fluke. was coming into his own. T.Y. Hilton, a receiver Grigsden, had drafted out of Florida

International in the third round in 2012, was establishing himself as one of the most dynamic, deep threats in the league. And despite a leaky offensive line and an inconsistent run game, surely you remember Trent Richardson's 2.9 yards per carry average, the Colts were becoming a real threat in the AFC. And their playoff opener against Kansas City, luck, the comeback artist, painted his masterpiece. This is his first whole year on the sidelines after battling leukemia last season. Down 28 points in the third quarter, luck and the Colts would go on to win 45-44. It was the second biggest playoff comeback in NFL history.

Steps up. Long look at each. For Pagano, the play that still sticks with him all these years later came in the fourth quarter. The Colts were down 10, but inside the Chiefs five-yard line when running back Donald Brown lost the football. Without a second of hesitation, luck. scooped it up and he didn't dive on the ball. He didn't protect it for another down. He picked it up and dove straight into the end zone. It was backyard football at its finest. Fumbled on that down on the goal line and the ball squirts out of there and then he picks it up and basically triple jumps himself,

you know, into the end zone. And they get it to him again. Bumble. He fumbles the ball and talks about luck. Reaches for the goal line and scores a touchdown. I mean, that one right there, just to show the instincts that that kid had. Luck threw for 443 yards and four touchdowns in just a second playoff game ever. And afterwards, Pagano, a man admittedly prone to a little bit of hyperbole, predicted that luck would one day go down as one of the best, if not the best, to ever play the game. As much as Luck's legend was growing on the field, his quirky off-the-field persona was starting to attract a following. Welcome back to another episode of the Andrew Luck Book Club podcast.

and I am thrilled to be joined by a friend, a great author, T.A. Baron, Tom Barron. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Andrew. I'm delighted to be with you. More on that after the break. There's this idea we have of quarterbacks, what their personalities should be. Think of Clint Eastwood. Think Harrison Ford.

Swaggering. Gunslingers. Iron-jawed leaders of men. Unflinching in the biggest moments. With luck, he was a leader, but swaggering. Haggreen isn't exactly the word you'd use to describe him. He's like, goofy cool. That laugh, that neck beard, the whole thing is like goofy cool. And it was just a joy coaching him because I put this stuff in.

If he had a question, he'd come down and, what's this really mean? We're looking for this. Oh, I got that. It was a joy coachman because he got it. He got it and he could get it to his buddies. He could tell him what he was thinking. What I'm looking for. Hey, when you run this ride, I'm looking for this.

T.Y. I was a rookie planer, Kobe, Alan was all those guys, and it's like, hey, you get this, we'll win. So much of luck in those early years ran counter to what we're used to with celebrity quarterbacks. He was refreshingly original, unrelentingly authentic, and even a little bit stubborn. He famously kept using a small flip phone. Teammates would complain about it because when they texted him a picture, he couldn't even open it up. He used a Velcro wallet with his college logo on it. His locker was always a mess, and he'd let his beard green.

he said, because he was just too lazy to shave it. On game days, he'd wear these boxy suits from Joseph A. Bank, a far cry from the fashionable ensemble so many of his counterparts in the league would slip on after their games. We used to get older than him. I was like, Andrew, come on, man, you make entirely too much money. Buy you five suits. Dequille Jackson says Lux's life priorities just didn't include fashion.

Buy you five suits a year, and you don't have to deal with it for the next 10 years or so. Just buy you some suits that fit. You know, it's like he just, he just, didn't care. He did not care about some of the things that everyone else was wrapped up them, but, you know, they don't make them like that. Interview sessions with Luck were different. I'll be honest, I was a bit confused at the play. They lined up in a look that they'd only shown

once before all year. You know, it's like, a little bit of, you know. Once asked something he didn't like, Luck politely responded that he took Umbrage with the question. then admitted to a reporter afterwards that he'd been waiting for weeks to use that phrase. Peppered another time about a failed fourth-down conversion at the line of scrimmage, he shook his head and vowed that the decision would remain a poor one for perpetuity. Who talks like that? A locker room after when, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more joyful, you know, spot, I think, in the world.

It's addicting, it really is. You wish you weren't so much a slave to that feeling, that emotion, but I think we are. On one end, Luck was becoming one of the young faces of the league, and worse yet, a celebrity quarterback, something he had no interest in. He tolerated the external demands of his position, but he never enjoyed them. I remember having some insightful conversations during this time with Matt Hasselbeck, who'd signed with the Colts in 2013 as Luck's backup. He had tremendous perspective on all of it. Hasselbeck had been Brett Farr's backup in Green Bay early in his career before becoming the franchise quarterback in Seattle, leading the Seahawks to a Super Bowl appearance in

2005. A lot of guys love being in the NFL, Hasebik once told me. Not a lot of them just love football. Andrew just loves football. You'd get the sense, he continued, that with Andrew, he'd love it just the same if there were no fans, no TV cameras, no paychecks, no records to be made. When I first took the job, I first flew to Indianapolis. I was there for a couple weeks, and he was out in Stanford, and he came in town, he and Nicole, and so my wife and I were going to take them to dinner. Brian Schottenheimer would become the Colts quarterback coach in 2016. Schottenheimer says his non-football conversations with luck were unlike any he'd had with any player.

And I remember sitting at dinner and just talking through, you know, hey, what are some of your hobbies? What are some of the things that you do? And just listening to him talk about some of the books and the things that he read. I mean, I don't remember exactly what they were, but just they're not on my bookshel. They're not on most NFL quarterback's bookshel. But he just, you know, he's just a fascinating personality. And I think when you first get to know him, you're trying to figure, okay, is this guy real?

Like, this is a little bit different. But then the more you get to know him, you're just blown away by his heart and, you know, the way that he treats, not just the people in the building, but really everybody. So it definitely a unique personality, but an unbelievable. huge heart. As a reporter, you're always looking for a way to grab the attention of someone you're trying to interview. For Peter King, he knew that bringing a book might do the trick with luck. My encounters with him were unlike other encounters I would have with quarterbacks. I remember I brought him a book to training camp one year because I had read a book and I knew he was so

into reading. So I just brought him this book and he was, he just lit up. He, thought that was the coolest thing. When there was a book out by a Stanford neurologist who died young and his wife ended up publishing the book, it was by a guy, a doctor named Paul Colanathy, who was a gigantic Andrew Luck fan. When Andrew Luck was played at Stanford, Paul Colanathy was a rising, brilliant. neurosurgeon who got ill and he died and his wife, he was writing a book at the time of his death and his wife finished the book. The book came out and I remember it might have been either his last year or second to last year. I brought him this book at training camp and he was

amazed because he hadn't heard of Colonythie and he hadn't heard of this book. Today it seems like every athlete has their own podcast. But how many athletes athletes have a book club that has its own podcast. Another month, another book, another podcast. Welcome back to the Andrew Luck Book Club podcast on Stephen Ambrose's undaunted courage. And for the very first episode, Luck had on the wife of the author of the book that King had given luck. I love the part of the end where he talks about the cent, or I think it's you writing, Lucy, about the syntax of football plays.

And I wish I could talk to him about the syntax of football plays. Would he really go into that? Yeah. Do you remember that, Stephen? You three were sitting on the couch. Yeah. Yeah. That's hilarious.

I would like to have him explain it to me. Luck wasn't just reading Game of Thrones or the latest biography of a certain president. Stephen Holder says luck would read about things very few people would want to read about, like concrete. This is one of the biggest quirks of all. It was just, you know, he majors in architecture, so I don't know anything about architecture, but apparently concrete's a big part of that, right? And so they're on this road trip to Cincinnati. It's a two-hour drive, so they just take a bus down there.

They are on the bus, and they're pulling into town. He starts telling all his teammates about how the buildings in the city were built with this particular type of concrete, which only Andrew Lowe could possibly know. It's probably the only player in the NFL who would know this. And he's going on and on about this, and they all have these blank stares on their face, like, dude, we don't care. he was literally, he had been reading a book about concrete. This is verified by two different players.

Matt Hasselbeck among them. Yeah, he's a book about concrete. I cannot imagine what would prompt me to read a book about concrete. There's nothing on planet Earth that could prompt me to do that. Angeluk read a book about concrete. And then told everybody about it. And then they reacted the way you would react, any human being. Like, dude, we don't care.

Holder, who has covered the Colts for nine years now, remembers convincing luck to sit down for a lengthy interview early in his career and how distinct the entire experience was. And one of the things that we asked was that, you know, because we did have this concept of capturing all the sides of him, right. And so one of the things we asked him, and this was a photographer's idea, Michelle Pemberton. She said, what about if we asked him to bring some of his favorite reading material? It was like, it was sort of a prop, right?

And it was so revealing to see what he brought. One of the books was the autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Great choice, right? It's like 900 pages or something ridiculous. But it's so just how inquisitive he is, just about just random topics. He also had an interesting magazine that I don't think I've ever read. It was Inc. Magazine. And it was, you know, this is a magazine that profiles leaders in business and industry and

innovative people. And they really had nothing to do with each other. But I think it showed you just what a what a person of varied, interest. And that is the part of Andrew Luck that, one of the parts, at least, that always fascinated me the most. This guy is just fascinated about everything, interested in everything. And I remember some quotes in that story that still stick with me. One being this person telling me, you know, he's a type of person who can have a conversation with anybody about anything. It's 100% true. But that is why, also why I think he was such a great leader in the locker room

and why he endeared himself to other players so much. It's in part because he was such an interesting person and interested in so many other things that he always found a way to relate to someone because he probably knew something about something they were interested in. There's also this. He was perhaps the most polite quarterback in league history. It's my fault. It's my fault.

Hey, my fault. Look had this strange tendency to compliment opposing defenders after they'd driven him into the turf. I'm trying. You're pushing to the guy. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. A little help. Thanks, Philip. Most defenders were like, what the hell?

Did he just say good hit? Dequille Jackson had heard about it when he was still in Cleveland. Defensive players around the league were talking about how different this dude was. I played against him before I ended up joining. I remember one of the defensive ends tell him. He's like, hey, man, this guy just, I just hit him pretty good. And he told me, hey, man, that's a good hit. I'm like, what the?

So I'm thinking it's like a mind play. You know, I'm like, no, he's not that. nice. There's no way. It's a mind play. But then you actually meet him. It's like, oh, no, he's as genuine as they come. He genuinely is that person. He's not, he doesn't have any other intentions other than, hey man, good hit. And it threw me for a loop. I'm like, no, hell no. Like that, no, no, you need to get out to the guys who should be protecting you not to get hit, not the other way around. In a lot of ways, luck just oozed football. Jackson says the quarterback couldn't contain himself when it came to the game. He had just like kidding mentality. The only other person I knew

had a mentality like that in terms of playing the game that you love and everything else just is noise. Frank Gore, they love football. Now, I love football. They love football so much. It made you question whether or not you love football enough. You know, it's hard to really put it into words unless you're around them every day. But here's the thing, this great duality when it comes to Andrew Luck. The nerdy, dorky exterior, be light of vicious competitiveness underneath. In episode one, you heard David Shaw, his coach at Stanford, call it the monster he keeps under wraps. His teammates with the Colts, they saw it every single Sunday. If you only know Andrew Luck from afar, oh, he's a nerd, there's some truth to that.

He reads a lot of books. Terrible. But I think the thing that really comes across when you're close is just a competitor. And that was the thing that you can't get from afar. And I remember writing a story early in my time in Indianapolis about how, but just about how he conducted himself in the huddle. And I remember several players telling me, oh, yeah, like, if you're not focused and you get out of line, Andrew Luck is on you. And I mean, he's dropping F bombs in the huddle and he's telling guys, like, get it together. Hey, can we focus? Can we focus? Get it in your eyes now. Get it in your eyes. Let's go. That was really just, it ran completely counter to what people thought Andrew Luck was. And I loved that because I think we cover these subjects and we love that they have layers.

And this guy had layers for sure. I loved that about him. And I think that was the beginning of me starting to understand who and what Andrew Luck really was. And he had that same capacity that the elite dude, the Rogers, the Brady's, the Drew Breezes to work. The crazier of the situation, the calm. he got. In the coming years, Tom House would get to know Andrew Luck almost as well as anyone. The former Major League pitcher and famed quarterback guru has spent the last few decades working with the best in the game. Tom Brady, Drew Breeze, Matthew Stafford, Dak Prescott, Matt Ryan, Justin

Herbert. Luck stood out to him then, and in House's mind, still stands out all these years later. And I don't know if you've seen a film of that. I forget what game it was where the ref was running back from the football, and he fell down. And Andrew was up the line calling out plays. He bent over, helped the ref up, pat him on the rear end, and didn't miss a beat in the call. And he didn't even remember doing that. Again, I've been truly blessed as a kind of an outside consultant coach,

be around some of the best, not only in football, but in baseball and golf. And Andrew is right up there in my top five. teammates love him because he's authentic. He's different, but he's consistently different. And when it's predictable and authentic, then you'll get the whole locker room understands and realizes what they have going on when he walks between the lines. For those there every week, it was fun as hell to watch. There was a sense, no matter if you were on the sidelines,

sitting up in the stands or in the press box, that luck could pull the Colts out of any home. hole. 11 of his first 23 wins in the league featured a fourth quarter comeback. Think about that. 11 of 23. Every single snap could turn into a highlight. You know, there was just a feeling that, okay, if this game is remotely close in the fourth

quarter, you better, as a defense, you better buckle down because Andrew Luck is coming. And you just knew it. It was like uncanny. It was an uncanny ability, just this unflapability. And that's the thing. I think so many young quarterbacks, they make critical mistakes at the most critical times. And that's the hardest thing for them to overcome a lot of times, right? We see this over and over and over again.

They throw an interception on third down and the fourth quarter, and then that's basically the game. And those are the times when the pressure is the most, and your mind is racing and your pulse is racing. And there's so much going on. And the defense is trying to fool you and disguise coverages. And that's when you make mistakes. They're just, it's inevitable for young players. Except with Andrew Luck, oftentimes, that's when he rose to the occasion and actually I think played in many ways

better than he did sometimes at other mundane moments. And it was just really fascinating because there's nothing like that as a team when you know, you just know. Okay, look, we can play well today. But we got a shot because it's the seven-point game and it's the fourth quarter and Andrew Luck has the ball.

I mean, it really wasn't any more complicated than that. Peter King says luck had a combination of some of the best traits of the best quarterbacks in the league. He reminded me of sort of an amazing. amalgam of players. He reminded me a little bit in terms of his football intelligence. He reminded me of Peyton because nothing really surprised him. In body type and the way he played and the great army had, he reminded me a Rafflesberger.

Bigger guy, really hard to bring down in the pocket. The combination of those two players at his peak, those are probably, that's probably the sort of amalgam that made up who Andrew Luck was like in, you know, 13 and 14 when he really started hitting his stride and throwing for a lot of touchdowns and having the 400-yard games. And even though Luck is known for being incredibly bright, it's not like he was a robot at the quarterback position. May says that during his time in the league, Luck produced some of the most exciting football in the NFL. There was something just inherently exciting about the mechanics of the way that he played the quarterback position.

It's almost like when you watch a great shooter and just like the when they start to rise up, the entire crowd kind of starts to rise up. And Andrew, when he would move up in the pocket, Air Rogers does this a little bit where he has that kickstand front foot. With Rogers, it was like a little bit more graceful. With Andrew, it was like watching a rocket takeoff.

It was just special. Just watching him move in the pocket, it was refined without being robotic. And that's so hard to do. And it's just, he looked perfectly. He looked like a perfect quarterback prospect all the time who moved in this way that is exactly how you would teach it, exactly how you would do it, while also happening to be exciting and having this otherworldly skill set. When you go back and you watch a video of him playing against the Texans, you can hear the ball hitting people. You can hear it hitting shoulder pants.

It just so few guys have played the position that cleanly while also having that level of physical ability. Typically, you have to play that way because you don't have the body and the arm and all the things that Andrew Luck had. But he also had those things, and that's what made him so remarkable. The Colts had lost in the wildcard round of the playoffs Luck's rookie season, then the divisional round, his second year. In 2014, his third season, he took off. Despite a bad offensive line and no run game, Luck led the league with 40 touchdown throws and threw for 4,700 yards. Sports Illustrated put him on the cover with the accompanying cutline. This is for a feature story arguing you'll be the best QB in the NFL by the end of the season.

Your thoughts? Well, thanks, Luck shrugged. A lot of work to do to get to that. He was on his way. The Colts finished 11 and 5 for a third straight year, won a second straight AFC South title and easily handled the Bengals 26 to 10 in the wildcard round of the playoffs. In that one, Luck made one of the most impressive plays of his entire career, shedding a would-be sack from Cincinnati defensive end Carlos Dunlap,

then rifling a 36-yard throw to the corner of the end zone to die. Monta Moncrief. I remember Dunlap in the playoffs hanging on, you know, chasing him down from behind, you know, and he's about ready to get sacked and we're like, oh, no, Andrew, go down or, you know, and he's almost on, caught him from behind. He threw that touchdown pass. I think the Moncrief was a unbelievable play. The win over the Bengals set up a delicious second round matchup the following week.

Colts at Broncos. Luck versus Manning. The storylines were obvious. The stakes immense. There was still, this is only his third year. And even though he had a lot of success, there's still going to be, at that point, there still was a decent size segment of the fan base

who still just unabashedly loved Peyton Manning and had a bitterness toward the Colts for parting ways. I get it, right? I mean, Peyton Manning, best player in franchise history, and they cut them, right? So, like, that's a really hard thing to digest. So here's Andrew Luck, the guy who replaced him, step into those shoes that just,

No one could possibly fill. And they're going on the road to Denver to play Peyton Manning's Broncos. They had been in the Super Bowl the previous year, even though they lost. They were certainly a team with high expectation. And so here come to the Colts, who hadn't really proven very much at that point. They had a great season, but certainly they were not favored to win that game. The Colts were the better team. Luck was the better quarterback.

He threw for 265 yards and two touchdowns that day, engineering a third-te-year. team play drive in the fourth that melts eight minutes off the clock. Colts tied in Jack Doyle would later call it his favorite drive of his entire career. Adam Venetary's 30-yard field goal to cap that drive effectively sealed it and the Colts won 2413. And I thought he went in there and had an absolutely fantastic performance. He upstages Peyton Manning in his house, his second house, I guess. And I think that was the moment when I saw the most joy from Andrew Luck or certainly one of the moments when I saw the most joy from Andrew Luck. He does his post-game interview,

and he comes off the field, just running off the field. I remember standing there in the tunnel outside the locker room, and he's just running and pumping his fist and gets to the door to the locker room, and he just like bangs his fist on the door and just joy, just unadulterated joy. And it was like, who is this guy? We go down and beat Peyton Manning. That was sweet.

In the locker room, that was sweet. Luck's former teammate, DeQuil Jackson. Mr. Ursay, Alder, Furnal, what chest bumping, and we're high-fiving and we're dancing and just like, it was a moment that from a little child, you know, ever playing the game and thinking about the moments, the best moments you would have playing professionally, that year was definitely it for me, hands down. The Colts were routed in Foxborough the following week, the infamous deflate cake game. Put simply, the Colts could not match up with a Patriots up front.

But the trajectory they were on was clear, and everyone following this team knew it. The Colts were close. A few more pieces at the right spots and they could go. get over the home. The expectations entering 2015 would be sky high. They lose the game. They were never really the better team. But I did feel like that night in Foxborough, I remember writing a column saying, you know what, next year, the goal needs to be the Super Bowl. There was only one reason for my unbridled optimism that night. And it was because they got number 12. They've proven they could get to this point. The next step is to go all the way. And I really, that should be the goal coming into

2015 and then, well, 2015 happened. Yep, 2015 happened. And Andrew Luck's NFL career would never be the same. On the next episode of luck. When I saw those hits, I just, everyone cringe. Because you know, if he doesn't get up, the future of this franchise is instantly affected, no matter how well the roster is constructed. From 2012 to 2016, talk about combined sacks and QB hits,

528 times, 34 more times than any other quarterback. I asked Andrew one time, I was like, what do you need? He's a coach, I love the play action game. And the play action game doesn't work if we don't run the ball. And he was so right. You want me to perform? Give me a running game. You want me to perform?

Build the offensive line. He took the shot and he was urinating blood and I think it was his kidney or liver or some internal organ. I remember talking to a medical expert. The sort of injury used to stain in a car crash, basically. You get broadsided by a pickup truck. That's when you rupture your kidney. He did this in football. Thank you for listening to Episode 3.

All six episodes of Luck are available right now. Go to The Athletic Football Show on your favorite podcast player to find the rest of the series. Luck was written and narrated by Zach Kiefer. The executive producers are Mike Smelts and Matt Havia. The Athletics Head of Audio is Andrew Wasserman.