Andrew Luck hasn’t played in more than a year because of a right shoulder injury. Peyton Manning can relate, though his was a neck issue that kept him out of the 2011 season.
“Everything is an individual thing, so you have to be careful speaking on it since injuries are different,” Manning told Mike Wells of ESPN after playing in Wednesday’s Pro-Am at the Memorial in Ohio. “But it’s also universal. For me, I was a [repetition] guy. I liked to get all the reps on practice. The theory of 10,000 reps, I believe in that. I felt like I was kind of behind because I hadn’t gotten the reps even though you have a lot in the bank. It took me a few games before I felt like I was coming back. Getting as many reps as possible is key.”
While the Colts remain confident Luck will play this season, the franchise quarterback has not thrown a football since last October. The plan is for Luck to begin throwing a football sometime between June 14 and the start of training camp.
“For me, coming off missing the entire year with the neck, I knew I was going to have to play a different kind of way, a different sort of physical state,” Manning said. “I was looking for things like positive feedback from receivers on whether the ball felt the same coming in and then when you get into the game and you throw a deep out. We played a preseason game and I threw a deep comeback route, and that was a thing to check off the box. You want to do everything for the first time again. You want to get hit; you want to make a tight throw, have a two-minute drive. I wanted to do all those things again.”
Luck, 28, wants to do all those things again, too. But he’s not there yet.