Andrew Luck retiring from NFL

... and fantasy teams.

 

I think his two weeks at West Virginia should have painted a pretty clear picture of the guy.

 

My only gripe with Luck is he should have made this decision in March or before the draft.

Every player on that team, hopefully, is playing and practicing right now to win a Super Bowl. Now, you’re 1-6, you’re vision has changed, but this is still a team game and he did hurt his team doing this now rather than earlier.

I know he might not have been healing the same way, but doing it now sort of sucks. I guess it’s better than taking off the helmet the first quarter of their first game.

 

Might have been like Cutty in season three of The Wire - had to try it a bit before realizing that the game's not in him anymore.

 

Athletes make the kind of mega-bucks now that decisions borne of "love" and "motivation" can be made now. Of course regular Joes struggle to get it. They've never made that kind of money or anything close to it.

But if you wanna know why the best execs and coaches are a little heartless and ruthless, consider this Exhibit A. The Colts were good to Andrew Luck. They were, and he knows they were. They were good enough to him that, when given the chance to indulge the urge to walk away from it right before the season, he did.

 

I honestly don't get why Luck retiring is such a big deal. ESPN claims it's the most shocking retirement ever.
He was a good player, but he was 4-4 in the playoffs.
He's been beat to crap, presumably doesn't have major head injuries, and probably is set for a good life financially with his family.
Good for him. All the armchair haters can sit and spin.

 

The shock isn’t that he’s retiring. The shock is the timing.

 

I have no idea what this means. The Colts signed him to a contract which paid him market rate for a QB. The fact that he had more power than the typical player is good for him. If any player for the Pats wants to retire, Hoodie might throw him out of the building but the result would be exactly the same.

 

Maybe he had every intention of playing this year and something happened that he realized he couldn't.
I agree that if he had been planning it for months, that would be a douche move.

 

Heck, my goal in life is to be an NFL backup QB for one contract. I'll stand there, hold a clipboard for a few years, cash out, and never be seen in public again.
The only thing better would be to be a fired SEC head coach.

 

Are you writing this like some libertarian market economist because you are one or because that's a thing writers like to do post-Moneyball?

Luck quit because it wasn't fun. And he was honest about that, to his credit. And a man should not solely be his job. Not by any means. As a Christian, I believe that.

But, the point I'm making is, this is why executives fixate so much on the "does he love football?" question, and why they press guys to play through injuries. Because, on the flip side, there's Luck - who has been treated well by the Colts, and frankly not overly pressured as he missed 25 games and 1 1/2 seasons - who just walked away.

 

I'm on the outside looking in, but I didn't get the feeling that the Colts were any more "good" to Luck than most franchises are to their franchise QBs. I suppose that's something, since there are plenty of owners that actively hurt relationships with players, but still. He was the #1 overall pick and for several years, he was doing the Aaron Rodgers / Dan Marino "let me drag this roster into the playoffs" thing. According to Spotrac, he made $97M in seven seasons, with his highest year being $30M (with a signing bonus) in 2016. His highest salary year was $12M. If he had ever hit true free agency, he would have made more than that, since Kirk Cousins got around $84M for three years, fully guaranteed.