Trash or Treasure: The Case of Andrew Luck

By Daniel Sahagun
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Updated: August 22, 2016

I have found a comfortable spot on the internet today courtesy of the talented and slightly unhinged writers at Good If It Goes.

And so I’ve lured you all here for one thing & one thing only….. A discussion. A discussion about what you say? One man (mammal? Primate?) and that being Mr. Andrew Bartholomew Luck.

But before we get to the hairy subject we have to discuss what makes a good QB, & what makes a bad QB. At the NFL level there are things that are true for basically every QB in the league: they can throw the ball better than your average person, and they are taller and stronger than your average person. True? Of course it is, not a single person on Twitter or any of the bloggers on this blog can throw further than 30 yards and most are short and/or pudgy. *The only one who isn’t wildly out of shape is Shayne and that’s because he is a MLS superstar aside from his blogging duties*

So despite the claims towards the contrary, my point here is that these NFL QB’s are all decent athletes at worst, so we won’t use athleticism as a metric for our QB’s here. Using athleticism as a category would have made Jamarcus Russell a top 5 QB and that just isn’t true, so we will go by 3 subjective categories to judge our subject Andrew Jurevicius Luck: Stats, Consistency & Clutch Factor.

Stats:

2012:

4,374 yards, 23 TD’s, 18 INT’s, 54.1 Comp %.

2013:

3,822 yards, 23 TD’s, 9 INT’s, 60.2 Comp %.

2014: (his best statistical season to date)

4,761 yards, 40 TD’s, 16 INT’s, 61.7 Comp %

2015: (only 7 games played.)

1,881 Yards, 15 TD’s, 12 INT’s, 55.3 Comp %

If you looked at these stats and didn’t see a name or anything to identify this player,
would you consider them elite? Among the top 5 QB’s in Production and efficiency? I would hope not. Perhaps if only 2014 were included and nothing else you could have a case, but those other seasons did in fact happen and NUMBERS DON’T LIE. The man literally averages a pick(55 games, 55 picks) every single game. And if you say the numbers show steady improvement, then go fuck yourself. He may have gotten injured to gracefully end his season but the man has been Qwan puns his whole career (read: usually trash, sometimes surprisingly good). Before he went down he showed us that the 2014 season was possibly very fluky.

Consistency: He was good in the regular season of 2014, that’s it.

Clutch: Ah yes, the famed victim of Deflate Gate. Don’t get it twisted, deflating a ball does put players at a disadvantage and stunts offensive productivity, usually, but a deflated ball sure didn’t stop Thomas James Edward Anthony Earl Brady the 3rd from imposing his will on the Colts. So, I can afford no excuses to Luck except for one: he lacks the clutch gene and crumbled in the spotlight matched up against a legendary QB. It happens. Especially if you’re Peyton Manning.

So let’s get down to the nitty gritty: this curly dirty neck beard of a man is regularly & consistently rated as a top QB and I am TIRED of it. He had one good year where his #1 pick status was proven and then every other year he has been Tim Hasselbeck & Big Ben’s Beard after they did the DBZ fusion dance. He isn’t just overrated, I would venture to say he is the most overrated QB in the NFL period.

I am ready to throw hands with just about anybody who says Andrew Luck is top 5 and I mean it. Stop calling him elite. Peyton Manning is 10x’s the QB Andrew Luck will ever be and even Peyton Manning was trash when it counted, but his magnificent (regular season) stats give him leeway and warrant his “elite” status throughout his career. Andrew Luck hasn’t earned the luxury of glossing over his numerous trash performances. Andrew Luck throws picks like Brett Favre but without the extensive Wrangler Jeans collection or the Cannon Arm that resulted in TD’s in sunshine, rain, sleet and snow(the only good things about Brett Favre). Look, I personally believe Eli Manning is a better QB than Luck and Eli is basically a special needs kid whose parents paid off everybody to treat him normally and to disregard his excessive drooling, so I will kill anybody who says Andrew Luck is elite, with my bare hands

It’s just blatant disrespect to all the other QB’s who are bad. I mean, atleast they know it or are told so. Andrew Luck gets to be bad and then gets to go home, kick off his FILA’s and/or Tom’s (he looks like he wears Toms) and get his ego stroked by the talking heads at ESPN, NFL Network a lot more often than it should happen (never.) That’s White Privilege if I have ever seen it, because when Geno Smith is terrible this year, you will hear it and it will be CONFIRMED. Not Andrew Luck though, his neck beard will remain unscathed and he won’t even get called terrible by Stephen A. Smith. That’s just not the world I want to live in. Join me in the revolution and start calling trash players trash everywhere we may be heard, starting with Andrew Rutherford Luck. Please & thank you

– a wise man by the name of Westside Danye, who can be found on twitter at @WasTalCo