Insider: Andrew Luck lights it up during Colts night practice

Zak Keefer | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption Andrew Luck still working on timing with new receivers Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck is working on his timing with new recievers.

WESTFIELD — You saw it, him looking off the safety, looking ... looking ... looking ... then drilling T.Y. Hilton deep down the sideline. The sort of play those two have completed a million times — and the sort of play they haven’t completed in a good, long while.

The sort of play that tells you it’s coming back to him.

Andrew Luck, a few hours after admitting to putting up some things that “looked pretty silly on film” during his first few days back on the football field, made the Indianapolis Colts’ defense look silly for two hours Sunday night, lighting up the unit for the bulk of the team’s fourth training camp practice.

More: Frank Reich's quick passing game taking shape

More: Colts Day 4 of Training Camp at Grand Park

The touch is coming back, the feel, the chemistry. Throws like that one to Hilton prove it.

Luck went 19-for-22 for two touchdowns and no interceptions, his best stat line to date. For a stretch, midway through the padded practice, it felt like the seventh-year pro was dicing up the Colts’ secondary at his own discretion, picking and choosing his spots, hitting whichever receiver he wanted. He went deep to Hilton, his longtime favorite target, multiple times. In short: Luck looked like Luck again.

His play so far has offered no hints whatsoever that his surgically-repaired throwing shoulder isn’t capable of vintage Andrew Luck throws. To be sure, there are plenty of hurdles still left to clear, and preseason games to play, but No. 12 has proved this much a week into camp: Physically, he’s there.

The Colts have to be thrilled. The fans out at Westfield’s Grand Park Sunday night certainly were.

“No pain,” Luck said earlier Sunday of his first three practices. “Soreness, tiredness, for sure, and stresses on my arm that are different. (There are) stresses, shoot, on everybody’s body at this camp that are different.”

He did offer one tidbit that was rather telling. “It was fun,” Luck said, “being able to focus on getting better at practice, not just getting through practice and surviving — surviving to the next one.”

That right there is the biggest difference between Andrew Luck last fall and Andrew Luck today. Last year, he routinely threw through considerable pain in that surgically-repaired right shoulder. Some days were so rough he later joked that his arm felt like it was going to fall off.

So far, so good this time around.

“There have been four or five throws that have been like, ‘Oh yeah, that looks 100 percent like normal,’” coach Frank Reich said before practice Sunday. "Then there have been one or two that we just need to work through and continue to get better."

Four practices into training camp, Luck is back to being a quarterback, back to honing technique and timing and his rapport with his receivers. He vowed Sunday that he’s “very happy” with where he is, and that his arm is “responding well” to the increased workload he’s seen over the last week. He’s been a full participant in three of the Colts’ four practices; Saturday was his scheduled day off from throwing.

As for the soreness vs. pain debate, Luck has made a deliberate point this spring to differentiate between the two. Pain was what he had last fall. Soreness is part of life in the NFL, and certainly at training camp. It’s a requisite for building the strength in his throwing shoulder that will sustain him over a four-month NFL regular season.

By any measure, Luck was rusty during Thursday’s workout, his first real practice in 18 months. He didn’t disagree, hence the “silly” comment. He admitted to some pre-practice jitters, and the challenge of facing a defense for the first time in over a year. He went 11-for-19 but failed to hit any big throws. His deepest toss of the afternoon, intended for tight end Erik Swoope, was picked off by rookie linebacker Darius Leonard.

Luck was noticeably better on Friday, and he noted that “things seemed to calm down and slow down a bit.” That will continue to happen over the course of the next five weeks, as he faces hurdles – more live periods against the Colts’ first-team defense, preseason games, squaring off against the Baltimore Ravens when they come to town for practice – that will ready him for his first regular season start, Sept. 9 vs. Cincinnati.

Things certainly seemed to slow down for him Sunday. He won’t see anything silly on that film.

One development Luck is fixating on this camp: His throwing technique. He has made subtle changes to his motion since the last time he played, changes he won’t elaborate on. He had admitted it’s a challenge — facing off against a defense for the first time, feeling a blitz, fitting the ball into tight windows, all the while trying to “not revert back to old habits.”

“There is a lot to think about as a quarterback,” Luck said. “All those things, trying to sort of keep a calm mind and translate the technique I want to use in team situations.”

Luck and the Colts will take a day off Monday. The quarterback will resume throwing during practice Tuesday and Wednesday before another offday Thursday. He’ll be throwing again during Friday’s night practice.

The Colts, meanwhile, face the Seahawks in their preseason opener in 11 days. Luck will start.

“Sure, he’s getting better and we’re all making progress, but we will plan to play him accordingly based on how much we would want to play our starting quarterback,” Reich said. “And maybe a little bit more just because he didn’t play last year, but I don’t think astronomically more than we would have.”

Luck’s goal in the meantime: Continue to build off the previous day’s work. He was better Friday than he was Thursday.

And he was definitely better Sunday than he was Friday.

Asked if he’s “let it rip" yet, Luck nodded. “I think so, a couple of times,” he said, noting a handful of deep throws he connected on with receivers late in Friday’s practice. “The second day, things seemed to calm down, like, ‘Oh yeah, I remember that,’” he said.

“There were a couple of throws that second day I felt very, very good about,” he said.

There were about a dozen more Sunday night.

Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134 and follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.