Some Guys Have All the Luck

Why Andrew Luck should be celebrated more than Tom Brady

Happy Monday except to Cowboy fans (of which I am), Longhorn fans (of which I am), and Aggie fans (of which I’m not)!

Today’s newsletter is about two football players, but it is not about football.

Instead, we will focus on life outside of football for two quarterbacks, and how culture for the most part has celebrated one over the other.

I will talk about why I think it should be the other way around.

Last night, my dad and I watched the Cowboys lose yet another home opener to Tom Brady.

For those that aren’t sports fans, Tom Brady is the best to ever play quarterback. He’s won Super Bowls, MVPs, Super Bowl MVPs and is married to a supermodel in Gisele Bündchen.

Oh, and he’s 45 years old.

Last night, he made history as the oldest quarterback to start a game in the NFL. For context, he’s been in the league since 2000.

Brady is incredibly popular and rightly so. He’s been about football and family, and he has a great sense of humor. That he’s doing it still at a high level at his age is unthinkable and won’t be replicated.

Understandably, his Q rating is seemingly almost perfect.

He has not retired yet, but Rupert Murdoch has already given him a 10 Year, 375 million dollar contract to work at Fox after he does.

Where can I sign up for that kind of deal?

Still, that seems all a bit too much especially considering with whom I’m comparing him.

Andrew Luck also played quarterback in the NFL.

He was raised in Houston, Texas and went to college and played for the Stanford Cardinal in Palo Alto, CA.

While there, he majored in Architecture and received his degree before he even stepped on the field in the NFL.

In the league, ideal quarterbacks need to be cerebral. Both Brady and Luck have that in spades. They were and aren’t naturally athletic like a Josh Allen or a Patrick Mahomes, so they used their minds to outthink opponents.

Luck, in particular, was private off the field, too.

He’s known to only have a flip phone, to have started a book club while in the NFL, and to genuinely be nice to other players who tried to hurt him on the field by complimenting them on tackling him.

Besides the niceness of it all, that would subconsciously mess with those players’ heads and confuse them. He was using concepts of psychology to maybe lessen the pain he was getting.

As Bania from Seinfeld would say, “That’s Gold, Jerry. GOLD.”

However, Luck shocked the sports world in 2019 by retiring from the league and football because it did not make him happy.

I remember hearing that and being shocked.

Why would this guy give up hundreds of millions of dollars (he would likely have made around the much since he was that good had he stayed)?

Does he know that his job was so much better than all of ours?

That people would actually pay to be in the NFL?

Quiet quitting has been all the rage latelty, and during the pandemic, many people used that to find a new career path.

Luck simply did it before it was hip and cool.

In a perfect example of how society has its priorities mixed up, Luck’s news that he was retiring happened in the middle of a preseason football game in Indianapolis where he played.

When fans at the game saw the news break on twitter, some started booing him on the sideline.

Think of that? Someone booing you at your employer because you weren’t happy at your job and wanted to do something else for your mental health.

I questioned it then but as with life, I moved on.

I would think about him from time to time, but it seemed like he genuinely disappeared until Saturday.

Luck was inducted into Stanford’s hall of fame, and the football team tweeted out his picture.

That picture tells me everything I need to know.

Luck made the right decision.

He used football to better his life and get a great education.

He has his priorities straight even if people call him a quitting diva on social medial.

I love watching Tom Brady play. I respect that he’s doing what he’s doing at his age. However, he’s retired and un-retired almost as many times as Brett Favre.

For me, I’d much rather celebrate Andrew Luck.

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