INDIANAPOLIS — Almost everybody in football, from the ownership level on down through the fan base, has asked themselves the question in the last five years.
Even if they’d never admit it.
Would Andrew Luck ever get the itch to play football again?
He was so good. So young when he walked away, playing a position where the greats now play into their 40’s, then spend the next couple of years hinting they might like to make a comeback, the way Tom Brady made headlines earlier this week by saying he’s not opposed to returning if a team asked.
Luck has never felt that pull.
Not once.
“When I retired, that part of it was put to bed in my mind in a very simple, sort of direct way,” Luck said in his return to Indianapolis on Friday night for the 12th annual Chuckstrong Tailgate Gala. “There were a lot of complications around it, you know, certainly tormented inside, as you guys saw that night, but I think that part of it has stayed.”
The torment came from the teammates he was leaving behind, even though football, for him, had become a cycle of pain, injury and rehab that he did not want to pursue anymore.
Even as he knew there were parts of the game he would miss.
Football was a simple love for Luck.
“It gives you purpose, it gives you structure,” Luck said. “You’re on a team. I think you find some, you know, it scratches some deep itches of relationship and community and purpose and hard work.”
Ultimately, when he boiled it down to its essentials, Luck loved the feeling of competing with his best friends, the friends he still sees when he’s back in Indianapolis.
“There are parts of it you miss,” Luck said. “You don’t get to repeat that in life.”
But he’d made his decision.
Even though the love of the game still remained.
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A love that rekindled a couple of years after that fateful night in Lucas Oil Stadium.
“I’m not sure there was an epiphany,” Luck said.
He just wanted to be around the game again.
“Part of me realized that, something in life, that I needed to reintegrate football in a way,” Luck said. “Because I love the game still.”
Luck had gone back to Stanford and gotten his master’s degree in education, intent on using it at the youth sports level in some way.
Now, he’s found that outlet, even though he’s quick to point out that he’s not full-time. Luck coaches at Palo Alto High in California now, coaching two times a week and making it to as many games as possible.
“Football gave me a lot,” Luck said. “A lot. Most importantly, again, the relationships and the experiences with people that I loved. … I think part of me feels, and I don’t mean this in a cheesy way, but part of me feels like, you know, it’s my turn to give back to this game.”
Luck is doing it by coaching.
Not by playing.
Luck might be only 34 years old, the prime of the career for most great quarterbacks these days, but he is a coach and a fan now, taking his daughters to Stanford games, catching a half of an NFL game when he can. Luck made it to a 49ers game last season.
“It’s a great game,” Luck said. “I certainly do watch it differently. Part of me watches, again, like a fan, like a middle school or high school boy who’s watching Christian McCaffrey or Jonathan Taylor.”
When he’s watching, the thought of playing again does not cross his mind, although his daughters do know that their father played the sport.
“I have certainly realized I still love this game, and I want to have it integrated in my life,” Luck said. “It’s just, it’s got to be different.”
