Andrew Luck is Back, But the Colts aren’t
If you were like me, you thought that we may never seen Andrew Luck play football again. You wanted to believe that he’d recover. But Jim Irsay kept making promises that kept not coming true. If you remember correctly, Irsay said that Luck would play week 1 of last season. It seemed like every week was a promise that Luck was ready. Then he got put on PUP. And then after some more empty promises, Luck was placed on season-ending IR. We heard more promises during the offseason that Luck was progressing well. But by that time, Irsay seemed like the boy who cried wolf. And the cherry on top was Josh McDaniels backing out of the Colts head coach job. It made people wonder, does he know something that we don’t?
But then the news actually got better. Andrew Luck was throwing, albeit not full sized footballs. And now, he’s played two preseason games (with full sized footballs) with no hiccups. People assume that this means the Colts are contenders again. Their Vegas Super Bowl odds went from 60-1 to 40-1 just because Andrew Luck played in the first preseason game. The Colts were 4-12 last year but did own a remarkable stat. They lead at halftime of 9 games and lost 7 of them. 5 of those games were double digit leads and 3 were at home. People assume that with Andrew Luck under center, that won’t happen.
However, Colts’ fans may be a bit optimistic. While Andrew Luck is back and looks fine, he’s still a little rusty. He’s not quite the same quarterback (yet) that lead the Colts to an AFC Championship just a few seasons ago. This team still has some glaring holes, mainly on the offensive line and defense. When you watch the Colts’ preseason game, it seems like Luck is always on the move. Even on their one drive against the Ravens’ second stringers, the Colts went three and out and Luck got sacked on third down. Luck may be healthy, but he won’t be for long behind that offensive line. Add to the fact that this division is predicted to be pretty solid this year, you may be looking a Colts team that’s battling it out for last place with the Titans, instead of first with the Jaguars.
-Stephen Brown III (@sbtrey23)