NFL Twitter was up in arms this weekend after a tweet went viral by reminding the world that retired Colts QB Andrew Luck would be eligible for the NFL Hall of Fame in 2024. Luck, the first overall pick in the 2012 draft, shocked the world in 2019 when, following a Colts preseason game, he announced that he would be retiring from football, ending his career after just 7 seasons (technically 6 considering he missed the entire 2017 campaign). The announcement came out of nowhere, with Luck enjoying plenty of success, with 4 pro bowls and an AFCC appearance under his belt, but it was not without reason. Luck cited his long history of injury as the primary reason for calling it quits, and if you watched the Colts from 2012 to 2018, you probably understand exactly why he decided to leave the game behind. Regardless, the situation was pretty much unprecedented, and it remains that way four years later. That’s what made the Hall of Fame tweet so captivating. In any ordinary case, a player that played 7 seasons then retired wouldn’t have any case for Canton. But Luck wasn’t an ordinary case. He was elite every season he was on the field. Public consensus is that he would be a first ballot had he just played a couple more years. So is the resume he put together in his short career enough to one day enshrine him in the Hall of Fame?
I have no fucking idea. But it’s worth unpacking, because the majority of opinions I’ve seen on this say that there is absolutely no way Luck should ever be voted into the Hall of Fame, and it seems to imply that any thinking to the contrary is ridiculous. That’s where I disagree. There’s plenty of merit to both sides of the argument here, and while I agree that generally, a longer career is more deserving of a Hall of Fame bid than a short one, I also believe that having an arbitrary length of career requirement be the end all be all is far too restrictive. So my plan for this article is to have a bit of an argument with myself while I try to figure out which side of the line I stand on.
The first thing I wanted to check is if there’s any precedent for players who had short careers making the Hall of Fame. And look at that, there is. Gale Sayers played just 68 games across 7 seasons. 18 games less than Andrew Luck played. Terrell Davis played 85 games across 7 seasons, 1 less than Luck. As far as total games played go, Luck played more football than both of those Hall of Famers, so it stands to reason that if they were able to make it into the hall in such short time, Luck could do the same. However, there is some context that needs to be taken into account. The first and most important of which is the different positions. Sayers and Davis were running backs, and Luck as we all know was a Quarterback. Running back careers are generally shorter than QBs, so when we’re comparing the length of the players’ careers, it’s important to note that while they all played the same amount, Luck did fall far shorter than the other two when taking into account how long they were expected to play. With that said, The cases of Sayers and Davis confirm to me that in the eyes of the hall, brevity of career can be weighed less when in the face of extraordinary talent. But just for the sake of killing the position argument, I did a little thought experiment; If Patrick Mahomes retired today, would he be a Hall of Famer? To me and I presume many more, there is no doubt about it that he would be in Canton whether he called it quits an hour from now or 10 years from now. When I think about it like that, it makes me feel like the career length argument should count for a lot less than it is. And that’s not to say that it should be disregarded, I just think there’s a point where overwhelming talent or accolades should be enough to cover the gap left by career length.
That poses another question. Was Andrew Luck great enough to cover the gap left by his short career? I’m inclined to say yes. From the minute he touched an NFL football field, he was nothing short of elite. The Colts team that had just earned the 1st pick to select Luck by going 2-14, was all of a sudden 11-5 and in the playoffs. There was no crazy rebuild in Indianapolis. That team was awful. The entire difference was Andrew Luck. And it’s not like it was just beginners luck (ha), because the Colts continued to go 11-5 for the next two seasons, and even found themselves in the AFC Championship in the 2014-15 playoffs. If you hadn’t figured it out already, Luck was pretty damn good. This 3 year span would have him break the record for most passing yards by a QB in his first 3 seasons (this record has since been broken by Justin Herbert). He would also set the record for most passing yards in a single season in Colts franchise history, beating the record previously set by a little-known quarterback named Peyton Manning. He also placed in the top 5 for most passing touchdowns and yards in a QBs first 6 seasons, with 171 and 23,671 respectively. He also made 4 pro bowls in the 5 fully healthy seasons he played. Those were his first 3 seasons, as well as his 2018 campaign that also earned him a Comeback Player of the Year award when he led the Colts to another 11 win season and playoff berth following a recovery from a shoulder injury that kept him off of a football field FOR 616 DAYS. Taking all of that into consideration, how can you not say the guy was elite? He elevated a franchise faster and on a scale unlike any we’d seen in the game at that point.
So, I had established earlier that the criteria for ignoring career brevity would be extraordinary results or production in that limited time. Did Andrew Luck have that? Absolutely. He was perennially among the best at his position, and turned a franchise that had just won two games the year prior into a back-to-back-to-back double digit win and playoff appearance team. His stats support the claims, and if you watched the guy play, you know the eye test does as well. Andrew Luck was a Hall of Fame player. So why are we so reluctant to give him the Hall of Fame nod or AT LEAST acknowledge that he has a chance?
From this point on, it’s purely speculation from me, so feel free to skip to the end if you don’t want to read my random analysis. But if I had to guess, I would say a lot of the hesitation is happening subconsciously. It’s baked into the nature of this game we love, a game in which injury is unavoidable and as such, we expect players to get hurt and come back early and often. Even though we saw how beat up Andrew Luck got, how much pain he must’ve gone through, and how long and arduous his recovery processes were, no one ever thought he would just walk away from the game. So when we saw him retire, no matter how much his reason made sense, I’m willing to bet that most fans griped about the idea that he could’ve and should’ve kept playing regardless. I firmly believe that had he suffered one career ending injury and was forced out of the game, with the exact same stats and career, we probably would look at his career fondly and would waste no time electing him to the Hall of Fame, but because he made the decision to leave himself, it almost feels as if he gave up, even though it’s not true. On top of that, I think we get so caught up in the “WHAT IF” of Andrew Luck’s career, that we forget exactly how good he was when he was actually playing. I’m not saying it’s wrong to hold the opinion that Luck shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame. In fact, I think it’s perfectly valid to penalize him based on the length of his career, but in this case specifically, it feels like a lot of it is done in bad faith.
In the end, should Andrew Luck be a Hall of Famer? Honestly, I’m going with yes. 100%. I came into this prepared to write a piece on why he just couldn’t make it into Canton, but as I progressed through the research process, and was reminded of exactly who Andrew Luck was, and especially once I decided I didn’t care too much about short careers, the positives of Luck far outweighed the negatives. He was a special athlete, and a gifted football player. He was robbed of a surefire all time great career by his organization’s inability to put a functioning Offensive Line in front of him, but that shouldn’t break his case. If you want to penalize him for leaving early, make him wait a couple years. But if the pro football Hall of Fame is really about what we have been told it’s about, Andrew Luck deserves to be there. With that said, do I think he WILL make the Hall of Fame? No. I believe that too many voters harbor the thought process that I had discussed previously in this article. But in my opinion, he would far and away be the greatest football player to not make it in, and that alone is reason to give him the nod. At the end of the day, I’m pretty sure we all care about Andrew Luck making or not making the Hall of Fame more than Andrew Luck does anyways.