For all the talk in the media about whether or not Luck will be healthy enough to play, I'm not sure it really matters. Not only has he failed to ever beat the Pats, he really hasn't played well since last November.
From December 2014 through the present day, a time frame spanning 10 games (including playoffs), he's been mediocre. Here are his passing totals over that stretch:
2270 yards, 14 TDs, 16 INTs, 56% comp, 6.3 y/a
Yeah, I know my arbitrary cutoff starts right after a game where he threw for 370 yards and 5 TDs. I'm not saying the guy miraculously became a bum when the calendar turned to December 2014. But people were ready to anoint him as the next great QB when he was tearing up the league last season. It kind of flew under the radar that he tailed off pretty badly the last month of the year. Then he played great against a depleted Cincinnati team before winning in Denver, despite turning it over twice. And we all know what happened in the AFC Championship.
Injured or not, he's looked more like late 2014 Luck thus far than he has early-mid 2014 Luck. And this was supposed to be his greatest assembly of skill players (though little was done to improve the o-line). He's still young and I'm not in any way writing him off or anything, but people need to consider the possibility that his hot stretch for the first 12 weeks of last season was the outlier and not a new norm. He's a turnover prone guy who is just as capable of losing the game for his team as he is to win it for them. Oftentimes his dramatic comebacks are set up by mistakes he made to dig his team a hole. The playoff game against KC in 2013 is a good example of that.
At this point, I'd say he's a lot closer to the Eli Mannings of the world than he is to Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers. I know a fair number of people on this board probably recognize that fact, but I'm not sure the national media is ready to acknowledge it.
From December 2014 through the present day, a time frame spanning 10 games (including playoffs), he's been mediocre. Here are his passing totals over that stretch:
2270 yards, 14 TDs, 16 INTs, 56% comp, 6.3 y/a
Yeah, I know my arbitrary cutoff starts right after a game where he threw for 370 yards and 5 TDs. I'm not saying the guy miraculously became a bum when the calendar turned to December 2014. But people were ready to anoint him as the next great QB when he was tearing up the league last season. It kind of flew under the radar that he tailed off pretty badly the last month of the year. Then he played great against a depleted Cincinnati team before winning in Denver, despite turning it over twice. And we all know what happened in the AFC Championship.
Injured or not, he's looked more like late 2014 Luck thus far than he has early-mid 2014 Luck. And this was supposed to be his greatest assembly of skill players (though little was done to improve the o-line). He's still young and I'm not in any way writing him off or anything, but people need to consider the possibility that his hot stretch for the first 12 weeks of last season was the outlier and not a new norm. He's a turnover prone guy who is just as capable of losing the game for his team as he is to win it for them. Oftentimes his dramatic comebacks are set up by mistakes he made to dig his team a hole. The playoff game against KC in 2013 is a good example of that.
At this point, I'd say he's a lot closer to the Eli Mannings of the world than he is to Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers. I know a fair number of people on this board probably recognize that fact, but I'm not sure the national media is ready to acknowledge it.
