Indianapolis Colts head coach Chuck Pagano wants his star quarterback Andrew Luck to stop playing quarterback like a linebacker to hopefully stay healthy.
Indianapolis Colts head coach Chuck Pagano told NFL Media’s Judy Battista that many of the hits that his star quarterback Andrew Luck takes “are avoidable” and his star quarterback needs to play smarter.
Pagano went on to say, “He’s a competitive guy. He plays the position like a linebacker, with a linebacker’s mentality. He can’t do that all the time. We love how he extends plays, but he’s got to be smart and know it’s OK to slide. You don’t have to take some of those hits.”
He has a strong point that owner Jim Irsay has agreed with in the past: Luck has to learn how to pull off the baseball slide to have longevity in the NFL. Luck missed the second half of the 2015 NFL season with a lacerated kidney suffered against the Denver Broncos. Indianapolis went on to go 8-8 in the AFC South and failed to reach the AFC Playoffs for the first time in the Luck/Pagano era (since 2012).
Luck may have the build of a prototypical linebacker, but he can do things throwing the football that people can only dream of. While his is nimble for his size and does have the tenacity to fight for first downs carrying the ball, the Colts are a substantially worse football team when Luck isn’t starting at quarterback on Sundays.
Though the Colts can look to upgrade their offensive line to better protect Luck in the 2016 NFL Draft, the supposedly improved protection would be for not if Luck scrambles out of the pocket and hurts himself taking an unnecessary hit from an outside pass rusher.
Without Luck starting at quarterback, the Colts may struggle to hold their own in the AFC South against the strong defense of the Houston Texans, the vaunted aerial attack of the Jacksonville Jaguars, and the former Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota’s Tennessee Titans.
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