Life without Andrew Luck: How Colts are adjusting until he's back on his game
Zak Keefer- Next up: Colts at Cowboys, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, WXIN-59
They'll tease him in the meeting room. They’ll call him “a beautiful mind” after he summons in an instant a blitz or an audible or a throw from four years ago, Manningesque, and tell them all which game it was from, which quarter it happened in, what the down and distance were. Andrew Luck replays it in his head while the rest gaze at the film.
He’s in every quarterback meeting, at the team facility early each morning and late each night – “I’m pretty sure he sleeps here,” one teammate recently joked – slogging away on his seventh month of rehab while the regular season opener inches closer and a city waits for that beautiful arm of his to be unleashed. The truth, harsh as it is: These Indianapolis Colts don’t have much going for them until that happens.
More great Colts coverage:
- Insider: Who was Colts owner Jim Irsay's mystery QB?
- Insider: As Andrew Luck questions linger, Colts QBs struggle
- Doyel: The only thing that's clear about the Colts' QB situation? It's not Kaepernick
- Indianapolis Colts 2017 schedule
- Love our Colts coverage? Download the free INSports app
As for Luck himself, the franchise QB has appeared curiously upbeat recently. Largely absent from the team’s early-morning training camp practices, he made a rare arrival after Friday’s joint work with the Detroit Lions. He first ducked into the team’s indoor facility for a quick chat with new General Manager Chris Ballard. A few moments later, Luck bounded onto the practice field, saw a smattering of reporters and playfully ducked behind some tackling dummies. It was obvious: He was in good spirits.
Must be because he’s throwing the football again.
“Jim, I know I’m going to be an even better quarterback than I’ve ever been before,” Luck recently told his boss, team owner Jim Irsay. “I just don’t know when.”
And that seems perfectly fine with Irsay and the Colts. “This is a 12-year process,” Irsay stressed after Sunday’s preseason loss to Detroit, later harping on the fact that the fate of his franchise over the next “10, 12, hopefully 14 years,” could -- and very likely will -- rest on Luck’s surgically repaired throwing shoulder.
Irsay will wait. If it costs his team a couple of games to start the season, so be it.
What we know now, three and a half weeks shy of the Sept. 10 regular season opener in Los Angeles: Luck is throwing, wants to throw more, and the Colts won’t allow it. At Irsay’s orders, this organization is handling this situation delicately, patiently. In the end, the call won’t be made by Irsay, Ballard or even coach Chuck Pagano. It’s the doctors who first have to sign off on Luck returning to the field.
And all indications are that Luck will return to that field at some juncture before the preseason concludes, which would allow him to throw to his receivers for the first time since New Year’s Day. The question then – beyond how Luck’s shoulder responds to the increased workload – is how long until Luck is Luck again.
Reggie Wayne has an idea. The Colts’ all-time leader in games played spent the 2008 preseason catching passes from backup Jim Sorgi while Peyton Manning rehabbed a pair of knee operations. When Manning did return, just in time for a Week 1 loss to the Bears, he was rusty and out-of-sync – a shell of his former and future self. It took some time. The Colts started 3-4. Manning’s passer rating climbed above 90 just twice in the first seven games; it did so eight times as the Colts ripped off nine straight wins to close the year. Manning claimed MVP. All was right again.
There are similarities between Manning’s 2008 preseason and Luck’s this year – no exhibition starts for either – but the situations aren’t identical. Manning was dealing with a bursa sac in his knee. For Luck, this is his throwing shoulder, his meal ticket. This one’s a far more extensive rehab, a far more serious operation.
“It’s going to take a while,” Wayne said. “You need your quarterback and your receivers to be on the same page, and that takes a little bit. So whenever Andrew is available to throw, whether it’s before practice, after practice, him and his receivers are going to have to do that much more as far as getting extra work in on the field.”
During that 2008 preseason, Manning had tapes of every practice sent to his dorm room at Rose-Hulman; he’d summon Sorgi there in the evenings so the two could dissect the film together. Manning’s mission was to get his backup to play as similarly to him as possible. In reality, that’s not happening. Not with Jim Sorgi in 2008, not with Scott Tolzien in 2017. There’s a reason franchise quarterbacks are franchise quarterbacks.
“Think about all the time quarterbacks spend with their receivers in the offseason,” says Sorgi, now the team’s radio analyst. “That time is invaluable.”
Sorgi is right. In each of the past few summers, Luck has joined up with T.Y. Hilton and Donte Moncrief – and Wayne before that – for weeklong bootcamps. There’s no doubt the timing and rapport they built under the summer sun at the University of Miami (Wayne’s preference) or Stanford (Luck’s preference) manifested itself on Sundays in the fall. Without that in place, it’s hard to see Luck picking up where he left off, at least right away.
“I don’t think it’s just gonna be pick up and go,” Sorgi added.
Luck has long professed a love for practice – his backups have, for years, jokingly complained that Luck refuses to yield even a single practice snap to them. (Manning’s backups said the same thing.) Now, everything Hilton and Moncrief catch is from Scott Tolzien or Stephen Morris or Phillip Walker. Save for a few standout plays, the offense has bumbled its way through camp, rarely looking anywhere near efficient. Sunday’s preseason loss was more of the same.
One thing Wayne suggested – and something he said the Colts stressed in ’08 – was a focus on the run game. Without knowing when, exactly, the star quarterback will return, his unit sought to home in on what they could control.
“We kind’ve force fed ourselves on the run game to make sure that it was ready to go just in case our quarterback does start off sluggish,” Wayne said. “We all know the Colts have been struggling in the run game (in recent years). So there’s no way they should not come out of the preseason and not be a better running team.”
(For those wondering, it didn’t work back then. The Colts combined for 78 rushing yards in their first two outings.)
It’s a nice thought. And the Colts’ rushing attack should be better this season, but there’s no guarantee. The offensive line is banged up, and without the downfield threat of Luck-to-Hilton to worry about, teams will likely stack the box and dare Tolzien beat them.
And that might be their reality for a week, two weeks, even three weeks. “We will not put any pressure on this decision,” Irsay offered Sunday. “I can’t emphasize how much time I’ve spent with Andrew, saying, ‘You have to make this decision in the best interest of the franchise, the fans, your teammates, etcetera. Not just your competitive juices.’”
No one in the building seems to know when that is. “Could be Sept. 10, could be Sept. 20,” Irsay said.
The day the Colts reported for training camp, Luck sounded exceptionally assured that when he does play football again, it won’t take him long. But that’s coming from a guy who hasn’t practiced in eight months. It’s the longest layover he’s had since he picked up the game in junior high.
“When the time is right ... whenever that is, I’ll be up to speed and good enough to be productive in games and give this team my best,” he said.
For now, the next step is getting him back on the practice field. It could happen any day. It could take weeks.
T.Y. Hilton and Donte Moncrief are waiting. So is an entire city.
Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134 and follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.