Imagine coaching Peyton Manning, then meeting a rookie who shows up to class without a pen. Bruce Arians did exactly that, and was stumped. A rookie Andrew Luck could do something that neither Manning nor Tom Brady could do.
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“Andrew Luck had a photographic memory because he didn’t take any notes,” Arians told Jordan Schultz on Schultz Report. “Peyton had a notebook on; Tom had a notebook on top of a notebook. And I’m looking at Andrew, I said, ‘You don’t take any notes.’ He says, ‘Because I got it.’ I said, ‘No, you don’t.’ And he would literally spit it back verbatim.”
He was not criticizing Manning or Brady for writing everything down. He was saying Luck could hear a play once and install it in his mind for good.
Luck was co-valedictorian of his high school class, so the story fits. Arians says the proof goes back to Luck’s interview coming out of Stanford. He asked him to redraw a play on the board, then told him he had it wrong.
“I said, ‘All right, put 62 Y Choice back up there.’ And he’s drawing it, drawing it, boom. I said, ‘That’s not what I said.’ He said, ‘It’s exactly what you said, and you said this.’ I said, ‘Okay, you got me. You got me, man.’ I didn’t have to question him anymore.”
It is not a new theory. In 2017, Arians said you only had to tell Luck something once, and called him a mix of Manning’s brain and Ben Roethlisberger’s body. That says a lot from a coach who has worked with both.
That memory also showed up in games. Arians says the Colts, under head coach Chuck Pagano, drilled late-game situations, and Luck treated them like a script.
“And Andrew’s not even waiting for me. He’s already on the field saying, ‘I got it. I got it. We walked through this twice.’ And he completes the pass, calls timeout, completes the pass, calls timeout, boom, we kick a field goal, win the game.”
Andrew Luck’s football IQ used to stump others on the team too. Pagano, in an appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, recalled one offseason drill with the Colts in which Luck suddenly called for a cadence that had everyone puzzled.
“BA (Bruce Arians) calls a play and he goes to the line of scrimmage. He’s getting everything set up, and all of a sudden, it was ‘Alert, Alert, Opposite, Opposite makes us check,’ … I spent the whole day [saying] ‘Get the F back! Get the F back. I was the ‘get back’ coach, and all of a sudden he rips out this ‘check check alert alert’ you know, and changes the whole play.
“Changes the protection. You know, we go from a run to pass, pass to run, and everybody’s like, What the f— did he just say?” We had to blow the whistle, get him back in the huddle, because nobody knew what he was checking to. And we’re figuring, “Okay this guy is a genius. He’s a brainiac, and you know, so we just eventually put so much on his plate because he could handle it.”
The numbers back up the brain. Luck threw for 4,374 yards as a rookie, an NFL record, passing Cam Newton’s mark and Manning’s Colts rookie mark of 3,739. He also had seven game-winning drives. Indianapolis had gone 2-14 the year before, and Luck led them to 11-5 and a playoff spot. For a franchise built around Manning for more than a decade, that was no small handoff.
It was similar to what Luck meant for Stanford. He majored in engineering with a special focus on architectural design, but his stint with the Cardinal is easily one of the program’s bests. Luck threw for 9,430 yards and 82 touchdowns playing for Stanford.
Brady has seven Super Bowl rings, and Manning’s preparation became legendary. Arians’s point about Luck is about memory, not résumé.
Injuries ended his career in August 2019, when he retired at 29. He led the NFL with 40 touchdown passes in 2014 and finished with four Pro Bowls and a 2018 Comeback Player of the Year award. He is now Stanford football’s general manager.
Imagine what Luck’s brain could have done with a healthy shoulder. Though underrated, he was one of the sharpest minds on the gridiron.