SPORTS USA TODAY z MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 2019 z 5C
As Andrew Luck spoke, Colts general
manager Chris Ballard watched quietly
from a folding chair at the side of a
crowded room. A front-row seat to the
end of an era.
Luck, the face of the franchise, was
retiring, and Ballard’s face couldn’t hide
the toll that stunning news was taking.
He looked on with eyes slightly swol-
len, like he had been crying not long be-
fore entering the room.
It wouldn’t be a surprise if he had.
This day, this week has been an emo-
tional roller coaster that Ballard couldn’t
get off. Though they’d only spent a cou-
ple of years together, the general man-
ager had grown close to his quarterback.
“It’s been an emotional week,” Bal-
lard said Saturday night. “I think every-
one in here knows my relationship with
Andrew.
“To watch the joy on his face last year
playing football ... to the moment in Ten-
nessee, both of us with tears running
down our face. After what I watched him
go through, then to clinch a playoff berth
in Tennessee. It’s an emotional week. I
wish him the best. I wish Andrew Luck
the best.”
In their time together, Ballard also
has had a front-row seat to the physical
and mental demise of Andrew Luck.
The general manager could do little but
look on helplessly as the injuries piled
up, plagued Luck’s body and slowly but
surely sapped his childlike love of the
game.
No wonder he’d been crying.
But when Luck wrapped up his more
than 20-minute retirement speech and
disappeared into the bowels of Lucas Oil
Stadium, Ballard took the stage – along-
side owner Jim Irsay and coach Frank
Reich – clear-eyed and confident.
Though still clearly recoiling from the
shock of the news and the weight of
what’s to come, Ballard embraced the
future.
It is his job, he said, to help steady a
franchise that has been rocked in a way
that almost no other has. How many 29-
year-old MVP-caliber quarterbacks
have walked away from the game in the
prime of their careers? And how many
have done it with less than two weeks to
go before the start of a new season?
Frankly, the odds are stacked against
Ballard and the Colts. While Luck had
been thinking about walking away for a
couple of weeks, he had only broached
the idea with the team last Monday.
They’ve had less than a week to process
and to begin to understand the seismic
shift this franchise is about to endure.
Fortunately, Ballard said, amid a mil-
lion questions Luck’s retirement leaves
in their laps, they have at least one an-
swer: Jacoby Brissett.
The fate of the Colts, at least for this
season, now lies largely on the shoulder
of the 26-year-old Florida native Ballard
acquired in a trade two years ago.
The Colts are now Brissett’s team,
and Ballard couldn’t be more pleased to
see the fourth-year veteran, a career
backup to this point, get this opportuni-
ty.
“Jacoby Brissett is a winning football
player in this league,” Ballard said. “And
you heard what Andrew said, Jacoby
Brissett is a rare, rare leader. He is. He is
a rare human being. That locker room
loves Jacoby Brissett. They love him.
That’s a special guy, man. And I’m excit-
ed to watch him play. I am.”
How Brissett will handle this sudden
weight thrust upon him remains to be
seen. He has been thrust into the lime-
light but has barely had a chance to
process his new status as QB1 for an NFL
franchise. Brissett only found out Luck
was walking away on Friday. Luck him-
self broke the news to him.
Reich isn’t quite sure how Brissett is
handling it. He’s only had a few minutes
to spend with Brissett since he found
out. And the former NFL backup-
turned-coach passed along the only ad-
vice he could think of on an emotional
day.
“This is hard on Jacoby,” Reich said,
“because those guys were close, so my
only comment to Jacoby was, ‘Let’s take
a couple days to digest this. We’ll talk
about it again after the game.’ Because
Jacoby was pretty emotional about this
as well. This was very hard for him. They
were very close.”Brissett, of course, isn’t completely
untested. He’s been thrown into a fire
not dissimilar from this one before.
In 2017, when Luck’s shoulder be-
trayed him, Brissett played in his stead.
But that was different. This team was
still Luck’s. Brissett was simply the
stand-in. The understudy. No one ex-
pected much.
To Brissett’s credit, he played above
those modest expectations. Though
that flawed team mustered just four
wins, Brissett saved the Colts from be-
coming a leaguewide laughingstock
that year.
He made few mistakes and kept the
Colts in contention most Sundays. In 16
games, he tallied 3,098 yards and 13
touchdowns versus 7 interceptions. He
ran in four more scores. By the end of
the season, Brissett’s feats had teams
calling the Colts about his availability.
They were rebuffed.
The following August, Irsay declared
the Colts wouldn’t trade Brissett for a
first-round pick.
“We think he’s that good,” the owner
said.
A year later, the team’s coach dou-
bled down on the franchise’s faith in the
big-armed quarterback, as Reich
dubbed him “one of the top-20 quarter-
backs in the NFL.”
Now their faith will be put to the test.
There’s undoubtedly plenty of talent
packed into a 6-4 frame, but Brissett
game’s has flaws. He’s not the most ag-
ile quarterback nor the most accurate
(.588 completion percentage in 2017).
He’s been cited for holding the ball too
long and checking down too often (6.yards per attempt was 24th among
qualified quarterbacks in 2017).
But those criticisms might not be fair
considering he was playing in front of a
far less talented offensive line in a sys-
tem not designed by Reich and offensive
coordinator Nick Sirianni. Perhaps be-
hind one of the league’s best collection
of pass protectors and under the tute-
lage of Reich and Sirianni, Brissett can
take the Colts where they want to go.
The path there won’t be easy. Even if
he is one of the 20 best signal-callers in
the NFL, he’s probably not a top-five.
That’s what Andrew Luck was. Though
Reich and Ballard were clear: They’re
not going to ask Brissett to be Luck.
Let Jacoby be Jacoby. The rest falls
on the shoulders of Reich and Ballard.
They are the men charged with keeping
this franchise headed in the right direc-
tion. Ballard’s decrees about this team
not being about one man, about Luck,
will be put to the test now and in the fu-
ture.
Ballard confronted that reality Satur-
day night when a reporter asked: “At
your introductory press conference, one
of things you stressed is: It can’t be
about one guy. Andrew’s great, but is
this sort of going to test (that)?”
Ballard leaned forward in his chair
and answered immediately.
“Absolutely,” he said, before pausing
and choosing his next words carefully.
“I’m excited,” Ballard said. “Teams
win. Teams win. That’s what makes this
game great. Don’t write the end of this
story yet. Do not write the end of this
story yet. It’s not the end of the story. It’s
the beginning.”Colts not giving up on new season
GM, coach have
faith in Brissett
Jim Ayello
The Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network
Colts owner Jim Irsay, Luck’s wife Nicole Pechanec, Kalen Irsay Jackson and coach Frank Reich listen as Andrew Luck an-
nounces his retirement following the preseason game Saturday night at Lucas Oil Stadium.MATT KRYGER/THE INDIANAPOLIS STAROne of the most telling things about
the 12 hours or so after Andrew Luck’s
out-of-nowhere retirement announce-
ment is the lack of conversation about
legacy.
Here’s someone who was a college
superstar, a No. 1 overall draft pick, one
of the best quarterbacks in the NFL
when healthy.
Here’s a four-time Pro Bowler who
leaves the game at 29 with four playoff
appearances, no Super Bowls and prob-
ably no chance to get into the Pro Foot-
ball Hall of Fame, which would have
seemed like a certainty after his first few
years in the league.
A decade ago, under the very same
circumstances, we might have viewed
Luck as a disappointment for opting out
with a decade of football ahead of him,
for walking away without fulfilling his
potential as one of the all-time greats.
But to the extent there’s been any
conversation critical of Luck, it’s only
about the timing of his decision on the
eve of the regular season, not the deci-
sion itself or what it means for how he’ll
be remembered, all of which suggests
we’ve evolved in how we think and talk
about this stuff.
More than ever in football, we have to
view a player’s career in two different
ways. Given the brutality of the sport
and the long-term impact on the body
that we’ve seen in excruciating detail
across hundreds of former stars, legacy
is now just as much about brain cells
and body parts saved as it is champion-
ships won and statistical milestones
achieved.As much as the football industrial
complex pushes back on the idea that
this is an inherently unsafe sport,
there’s no going back to a time when the
pain and suffering is romanticized as
the reflected glory of American mascu-
linity.
More than ever, it is OK to love the
sport and appreciate the things it stands
for while understanding that many who
choose to play it will live out their final
decades with unimaginable joint pain
and foggy memories and, God forbid,
suicidal thoughts.
To reconcile all that just so we can
bear to watch, football fans have sub-
consciously accepted the bargain:
When players walk away earlier than we
expect with their bodies still intact,
there’s really nothing to say but “con-
gratulations.”
The emotional, perhaps inebriated
few Colts fans inside the stadium who
booed Luck on Saturday night when
word leaked about his retirement will
surely come to regret that today. Be-
cause at some point or another, every
one of those people has had a friend or
family member in a dangerous job.
And what do we do when those folks
retire or find some other way to make a
living that doesn’t require us to say a
prayer or hold our breath every time
they leave for work? We throw a big par-
ty and thank whatever God we worship
that our loved ones walked away with-
out paying too big a price.
That is how we have to innately thinkabout football now, which is troubling
but also liberating.
Odds are, there are going to be more
and more like Luck because it’s one of
the most sensible and rational ways for
players to think about their careers.
For many of them, at a certain point,
the amount of money they’ve made is
just a number that won’t have a real im-
pact on the way they live the rest of their
lives. So then comes a choice: Do you
want to spend several more years put-
ting your body through the brutality of
the NFL, or do you want to take the free-
dom you’ve earned and do something
else that won’t put your long-term
health at risk?
Knowing what we know about foot-
ball, anyone who criticizes a player for
choosing the latter comes off like a trog-
lodyte whose grasp of humanity runs no
deeper than what play to call on 3rd-
and-3.
Likewise, there is absolutely nothing
wrong with those who decide that their
true passion is playing football for as
long as they can, chasing Super Bowls
and eventually getting a bronze bust
placed in Canton, Ohio.
But more than ever, we have to un-
derstand that accepting the cost of
those things is going to be a privilege of
the few. It is certainly one kind of legacy
to be remembered as a champion in
football and an all-time great. It is also a
worthy one to be remembered as a hu-
man being who walked away too early
rather than too late.Legacy of Luck will be defined differently
Dan Wolken
Columnist
USA TODAYBy retiring, Andrew Luck, drafted first
overall by the Colts in 2012, gave up
$58.125 million left on his contract.
BRIAN SPURLOCK/USA TODAY SPORTS