00:00Chris Bowles, the GM out there in Indianapolis, he was telling a story about why Andrew Luck left
00:05Indianapolis. And like I said, I love when these stories come out years later, we get the truth
00:09of why a guy in his prime as a top five quarterback in the NFL, by most accounts,
00:15decided just to say, I'm done playing football. So as the story goes, and I'm blocking on the
00:20player's name, I apologize for that, but I'm sure you guys can find it on social media after the
00:24show. He tells the story that Andrew Luck was tired of being banged up and being hurt all the time
00:30and did not want to have what he deemed as unnecessary surgeries to fix problems. He wanted
00:36his body to heal on its own. So Andrew Luck goes to Chris Ballard and says, look, I'm tired of
00:42being
00:42hurt. Like the offensive line, I'm getting killed out here. I do not want to have surgery. So I'm
00:48just letting you know, I'm not having surgery. I might not be ready come week one because I need
00:54my body to heal. Chris Ballard then says to him, if you don't play, we're going to trade you or
01:02cut
01:02you, but we're not dealing with this crap from you. And because of that, Andrew Luck said, oh,
01:09is that right? I quit. And that's why Andrew Luck walked out on the Indianapolis Colts at the start of
01:16that football season because Chris Ballard said, I don't want to hear that. You're not going to be
01:21ready. We're paying you a lot of money. You are a franchise quarterback. Essentially, my words, not
01:26his man, the F up. You're a football player. Act like it. We got to play hurt. That's what we
01:32do.
01:32And rather than be sensitive to a player saying I'm broken right now, physically, I want my body to heal.
01:39He said, either you play or you're gone. So then Andrew Luck made it easy for him. Go out for
01:47yourself. I quit. Now, if you're a Colts fan and you wake up today and you see that story, and
01:55to be
01:55fair, the story's unchallenged right now. Chris Ballard's going to have a chance, I'm sure, this week
02:00or by next week to respond to that because your reporter's going to ask the question. But if you're a
02:06Colts fan and you look at the quarterbacks, the Colts have gone through since Andrew Luck was there,
02:13whether it's Carson Wentz or Anthony Richardson or Daniel Jones or dare I say 90-year-old Phillip
02:20Rivers, right? Yeah. Don't you demand that Chris Ballard gets kicked to the curb and fined?
02:29He should have been fired. He should have been fired. Like, it's unbelievable if they would let this
02:34happen. And I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but how does the owner, Jim Irsay, who was
02:39alive
02:40at the time, how does he allow it? How does he pick his GM instead of his player? How does
02:44he not
02:45intervene there? Yeah, great question. Now, he may have been in the middle of, you know, his issues at
02:50the time because he had well-known drug issues. I'm not sure the timing, how that matches up.
02:54It's a great question. But like, if I'm like, I'm a Jet fan. We talk about this all the time.
02:58You know, I've never had a quarterback in my lifetime. You're in Philly. Obviously,
03:02see, the Jalen Hurts story is not going away. I was talking to Howard Eskin about it yesterday
03:06because he's taking victory laps and he was on it, you know, before anybody else. And I love
03:10Howard, but that's what Howard does, right? But it turns out he might not be wrong. Like,
03:16there's obviously issues right now with Jalen Hurts. Maybe you run Jalen Hurts out of town,
03:20but the Colts had a franchise quarterback and the GM decided I'm going to be a tough guy with my
03:29franchise quarterback and set my franchise back 20 years by saying, hey, loser, either you play
03:37or we're getting rid of you. If I'm a Colts fan, like I want blood.
03:44Yeah. Yeah. It's like, if he's not gone, we riot. Like I'm not, I'm not a violent person.
03:49Like, no joke. If I'm the Ursa relative that, I forget the gal's name. Uh, you know, the daughter,
03:56right? That's running the squad. And I see this, uh, this, uh, podcast interview with a former
04:02Colt player. I'm not waiting till Monday. Hey, Chris Ballard, you need to be in my office now
04:09because I wasn't running the team when this happened. So I don't know what happened. Maybe
04:14my dad didn't tell me, uh, the true story, but I need to look you in the eye and you
04:19need to tell
04:19me, did you say to Andrew luck either play or we're moving on from you? If the answer is yes,
04:28then pack your bags, right? Yeah. No, no. Plus you traded two first round draft picks
04:38for sauce gardener last year. I should have fired you for that.
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