{"id":858862,"date":"2026-04-07T12:24:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T12:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/858862\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T12:24:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T12:24:48","slug":"did-gm-chris-ballard-force-andrew-luck-to-retire-qb-clears-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/858862\/","title":{"rendered":"Did GM Chris Ballard force Andrew Luck to retire? QB clears the air"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Indianapolis Colts recently made a major investment at quarterback<\/a>, although they traded one of his weapons<\/a>. But were there\u00a0shenanigans in the past? Did GM Chris Ballard<\/a> force Andrew Luck<\/a> to retire in 2019? The former QB cleared the air after the explosive allegation, according to fox59.com.<\/p>\n

\u201cChris and I had a wonderful partnership, especially through my decision to retire, and we remain close,\u2019\u2019 Luck said in an email to FOX59\/CBS4. \u201cAny notion of internal pressures that influenced my decision are without merit.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Lukc shocked the Colts when he retired in late August of 2019. He was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2012 NFL Draft. And he figured to have several more seasons of high-level play remaining in his career.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Luck) held an emotional press conference after the game and pointed to a personal need to break the cycle of injury-rehab-injury-rehab,\u201d Mike Chappell wrote.<\/p>\n

Was there more to the Andrew Luck story?<\/p>\n

During Eric Ebron\u2019s \u201cOn My Soul\u201d podcast, Ebron insisted things went differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s so tired of injury that he just doesn\u2019t want to do surgery,\u2019\u2019 Ebron said on the podcast. \u201cYou know who the man is around there that gets on everyone\u2019s nerves. (Ballard) over there behind that desk.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe tells Andrew, \u2018You\u2019re either playing this year, or we\u2019re moving on.\u2019 Who the (expletive) would tell Andrew Luck that, right? Andrew Luck now says, \u2018I\u2019m not going to be ready, I\u2019m tired of playing with pain. I\u2019m going to retire.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s something worth noting in this back and forth. If Ballard did indeed say, \u2018You\u2019re either playing this year, or we\u2019re moving on,\u2019 why would that matter to Luck if he contemplated retirement anyway? What leverage did the Colts hold at that time that Luck could not have erased by retiring?<\/p>\n

It seems like a very strange story. And the only reason to dredge it up almost seven years later, it seems, would be to get clicks for a podcast.<\/p>\n

The Indianapolis Colts recently made a major investment at quarterback, although they traded one of his weapons. But were there shenanigans in the past? Did GM Chris Ballard force Andrew Luck to retire in 2019? The former QB cleared the air after the explosive allegation, according to fox59. com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Indianapolis Colts recently made a major investment at quarterback, although they traded one of his weapons. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":858863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2059],"tags":[6502,5422,2005,7,2004,392,2381,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-858862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indianapolis-colts","8":"tag-andrew-luck","9":"tag-chris-ballard","10":"tag-colts","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-indianapolis","13":"tag-indianapolis-colts","14":"tag-indianapoliscolts","15":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116363416297178177","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/858863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}