Whatever you think of Peyton Manning as a person or player, he did not deserve what Irsay did him with that press conference when the Colts cut him. It has to be brought up cause their owner is terrible and mishandling Luck is only the tip of the iceberg. This all goes back to how he put Manning out the door to begin this era with Luck.

The "I want Super Bowl wins, not Star Wars numbers" quote will never be forgotten. That whole press conference was so bad and him saying that with Peyton standing right next to him the entire time. Here you have the QB who took your losing franchise, and elevated them to a level of respectability and even won a SB, and you tell him his stats are "Star Wars numbers"? Irsay deserved every minute of watching Peyton in Denver uniform make the playoffs and ultimate win a SB in his last year.

Irsay was also quoted saying Luck needed to "toughen it up" after his injuries. He refused to take responsibility by waiting a whole extra year to get rid of Ryan Grigson and Chuck Pagano. Why was Grigson even hired as GM, I will never know. He was a scout in Philly and there were reports that the Eagles office was completely stunned when the Colts took him for GM.

I wish Luck a happy retirement. I enjoyed watching him as a player and wanted to see him become an elite QB. He's a likable guy off the field and I sometimes wonder if he would've had a better career elsewhere without the Colts tanking the whole 2011 season to get him.

He could be playing for Washington if he wasn't a Colt and that's an even worse place to play. If Washington still wanted RG3 he probably would have been a Viking or Brown. Not better either. Hw wouldn't have had three straight 11-5 seasons with those teams. The problem with the Colts was what happened after 2014 when they tried to beat NE by signing aging players.

During the entirety of the four years of Luck’s rookie contract, Grigson drafted a total of three offensive linemen before the seventh round:

Hugh Thornton (cut before his rookie deal expired and never played again in the NFL)
Khaled Holmes (cut before his rookie deal expired and never played again in the NFL)
Jack Mewhort (never played again in the NFL after his rookie deal expired)
You can argue that the style in which Andrew Luck plays makes him more likely to be injured, and that is true.

You can argue that a player can be injured at any point in time, whether he has a good or bad offensive line, and that is true.

But what you can’t argue is that Ryan Grigson’s spending of cap dollars came to a head in 2015, producing subpar talent along the offensive line (one of the cheapest in the NFL).

And Grigson’s decisions produced measurable results in terms of volume of hits and sacks on Andrew Luck in that 2015 season (via Pro Football Focus):

2012: 38.1% pressure rate, 8% sack + hit rate, 41 sacks

2013: 37.5% pressure rate, 6% sack + hit rate, 32 sacks

2014: 36.2% pressure rate, 5% sack + hit rate, 27 sacks

2015: 40.2% pressure rate, 14% sack + hit rate, 34 sacks (extrapolated to a 16-game season)*

*Played only 7 games due to injury

Luck played in 2016, but was once again a man running for his life, as the stats clearly show:

2016: 44.3% pressure rate, 9% sack + hit rate, 44 sacks (extrapolated to a 16-game season)

Man, reading that quote that Cha Ching posted, if I'm Andrew Luck, I'm turning in my papers and retiring too....funny thing is, the Colts had a pretty great O line in the Peyton Manning era, including Jeff Saturday and Tarik Glenn and some of those guys. Luck was running around back there behind one of the cheapest O lines in the league. Really puts it in perspective.