The rumors weren’t going away, so Colts quarterback Andrew Luck had to address them.
Yes, he at one point suffered a shoulder injury (specifically an AC sprain) while snowboarding. But Luck insists that the snowboarding injury had nothing to do with the labrum tear that wiped out his 2017 season.
Luck also said that the snowboarding injury happened after the 2015 season. As the rumor has gone, it happened just after the 2016 season, and specifically precipitated the out-of-the-blue surgery announced by Colts owner Jim Irsay in the mid-January of 2017.
“I don’t snowboard anymore,” Luck told NFL.com. “And this was after the initial injury. I went back, rehabbed it with the Colts. I’ve had a bunch of AC sprains, both left and right shoulder, and resolved that issue. But the labrum has been my issue, was my issue, what I worked through, what I got surgery on.”
So the labrum was torn, according to Luck, before he suffered the snowboarding injury. He says the snowboarding injury ultimately didn’t impact the previously torn labrum.
“I’ve seen more doctors than I can count on two hands over the past two or three years, and the consensus -- unanimous -- is that the AC is not an issue, nor did it have an effect,” Luck said. “The labrum is an issue.”
That’s fine. But if that’s the case, why has the snowboarding injury been hidden for so long? And, again, the rumored snowboarding injury happened, per the rumors, a year later than Luck claims, making it the perceived or actual trigger for the surgery that was hardly a success.
Regardless of how Luck got here, it doesn’t matter. He’s apparently healthy now. The far bigger question is whether he’ll stay that way.