On Sunday Andrew Luck will play in a regular-season NFL game for the first time since the end of the 2016 season. That will be a return to the field that he once feared would never happen.
As Luck spent all of last year rehabbing from shoulder surgery, he feared he might never be able to play again.
“I was scared, scared in my core, in my insides. There was a time I was very scared about football, and about my place in football,” Luck told the Indianapolis Star.
Luck said that during the worst of his attempts to throw through shoulder pain, it nearly tore his life apart.
“I was a sad, miserable human,” he said. “I was not nice to myself, nor was I nice to anyone else. I was a miserable SOB to be around. I was nervous. I was scared.”
Now, Luck says, he’s feeling good about himself. He’ll hope that on Sunday against the Bengals, he can finally show that he’s capable of being the old Andrew Luck again.