Andrew Luck provided a first-hand update on his recovery from the right shoulder injury that kept him from playing at all this season on Friday afternoon for the first time in a couple of months and it was a largely positive one.
Luck said he went to the Netherlands to work with a trainer he’s worked with in the past because that’s where the trainer’s resources are located and not because he had any procedures that aren’t allowed in the United States. Luck also said he felt like he was being “pulled in too many directions” while he was in Indianapolis and wanted his “singular focus” to be on getting better because he was scared to still be feeling pain.
That pain has gone down “significantly” after Luck did strength training and soft-tissue work while overseas that yielded good results.
“I feel stronger, more stable, more confident in it. It’s better,” Luck said.
Luck, who generally sounded exhausted by the experience, has not thrown a football over the past eight weeks and said that he’s preparing to start a throwing program “as soon as I can,” but that there’s still a need to get his “strength back to a better level” before that gets underway. He does not think he will need to have another surgery or that throwing will be “the test” to determine if that’s the case.
There was a question about whether the wait to start throwing could lead Luck to miss the start of the 2018 season, but the quarterback said he doesn’t believe that will be the case. Luck was also asked about owner Jim Irsay saying that the injury was “inside his head now” and said he felt they were taken out of context because there are “mental things” every injured player goes through.
Luck’s still going through some of them as the significant drop in pain isn’t the same as an absence of pain, but Luck was confident that he’ll be back for offseason workouts after a lost year in 2017.