Andrew Luck is going to miss several games while recovering from a lacerated kidney and partially torn abdominal muscle. There has been speculation that he suffered the injury after taking a hit from Broncos linebacker Danny Trevathan, and Colts head coach Chuck Pagano all but confirmed that this week.
While he didn’t come right out and say Luck could have avoided the injury, Pagano did say Luck needs to do a better job of protecting himself.
“We’re going to talk every day until he figures it out and we figure it out as a team,” Pagano said, via Stephen Holder of the Indy Star. “He knows full well that he can’t do that. He can’t put himself and this team in jeopardy. You love the grit, and you love the toughness and all that stuff. But playing the position like a linebacker? You can’t.”
Pagano is right. You have to admire Luck for wanting to get every yard he can, but he is too important to his team to be lowering a shoulder into a 250-pound linebacker.
“That’s his mentality,” Pagano said. “That’s how he is. There are some great plays that are made, some first downs that are made. We’ll continue to obviously stress that availability is, obviously, huge — especially at that position.”
If you haven’t seen the brutal hit Trevathan put on Luck, you can watch it here. There had already been reports about Luck playing through numerous injuries prior to that game, so if anything he should have been more careful. You can expect the Colts organization — not just Pagano — to stress that with him going forward.
