Zak Keefer | IndyStar

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INDIANAPOLIS — Twelve days ago against the Texans he ripped into his offensive line early in the game, then lifted them up late. “At one point, he exploded on us,” says guard Matt Slauson. “Then he got back to encouraging us, because he knew we were starting to press. He had this great sense of what we needed to hear.”

Whatever Andrew Luck said or shouted that afternoon worked; finally afforded a clean pocket, the Indianapolis Colts’ franchise quarterback finished with 464 passing yards, the fattest sum of his 81-game career. Problem was his last throw of the day was his worst, and on fourth-and-game he fired it at Chester Rogers’ feet.

The Colts lost in overtime. Fell to 1-3 on the season. Hit the bottom of the AFC South.

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Four days later he fumed on the sideline at Gillette Stadium. “We’re better than this!” Luck shouted, his Colts down 21 at the half, another blowout to Brady and Belichick beckoning. So he rallied them once more. “He’s always had that aura,” says Ryan Hewitt, a college teammate of Luck’s who’s now the Colts’ blocking tight end. “He’s able to shrug off some things mentally that other QBs can’t.”

Luck carved up the Patriots’ defense in the second half – we’re talking about a dozen vintage Andrew Luck throws – and lifted a Colts offense missing its best receiver, best tight end, best running back and best offensive lineman to within seven points with 11 minutes left. The Foxboro crowd grew silent, and grew nervous. The Colts’ belief that vanished in the first half had been restored. The quarterback was the reason.

But the defense stumbled, then a dropped pass turned into seven points the other way, and the Colts ended up losing by 14. Fell to 1-4. Stayed at the bottom of the AFC South.

This is Andrew Luck five games into The Comeback: playing his best football in four years, carrying a battered team as far as his surgically-repaired shoulder will allow, buried at the bottom of the division and close to the bottom of the NFL. But there are also the questions he’s answered, the uncertainties he’s silenced. Can’t hold up? Can’t make all the throws? Doesn’t have the same velocity as before? Nonsense, all of it. In the last two weeks alone, Luck’s made the naysayers look like fools.

Matt Kryger/IndyStar

Bruce Arians, one of Luck’s favorite all-time coaches, has been watching. He sees a QB with his mojo back. “He’s been playing his (expletive) off,” says the longtime offensive guru who’s now an NFL on CBS analyst. “There’s no doubt he’s back. No doubt. The guys around him just gotta catch the ball, man.”

Arians is right. Twelve drops in two games? The mistakes have buried the Colts, plain and simple.

So why is he still smiling after losses? Before practices? In media scrums? It’s more than the shoulder. More than the new lease on his football life. More than 829 yards and seven touchdowns in two weeks. Dismal record or not, he genuinely sees the arrow pointing up at West 56th Street. What he doesn’t mention, but makes the sentiment no less true: It hasn’t felt like this in a good long while.

“I believe in this thing,” Luck says at his locker one day this week. “I believe in what we’re doing. Eventually, the results are gonna show.”

He cites “a good vibe in the building,” promptly listing the names Jim Irsay, Chris Ballard and Frank Reich. “I get along great with each of them, and that’s not to say I didn’t get along with everyone before.”

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There was a moment in the fourth quarter of last week’s loss in New England that spoke to Luck’s renewed fire. Luck stared straight at Erik Swoope in the huddle as he called a seam route for the tight end from the Patriots 13-yard line. Luck took the snap, looked left, shrewdly baiting the defense’s eyes to that side of the field, then flipped right and fired a strike straight into Swoope’s hands. It was Luck’s second touchdown throw in 3 minutes. The lead was just seven. The momentum had flipped.

So certain his QB would march the offense right back down the field for another touchdown, Reich decided on the two-point conversion call he was going to dial up for the win. Luck was that hot, the coach that confident.

But it was what Luck did after the throw that was most telling. While Swoope was mobbed by teammates, he darted for the end zone and unleashed the sort of emotional celebration that’s been almost entirely absent throughout his seven-year NFL adventure. He clenched his fists, crouched and let out a primal scream.

Maybe, in this moment, Luck finally put to bed two years of football hell; maybe he felt like he was turning the tide after more than a half-decade of futility against this team and this coach in this stadium; maybe it’s because, battered roster or not, lousy record or not, he’s having more fun playing the game than he ever has.

Six days later Luck glances at a photo of his uncharacteristic celebration and shrugs. “I was excited for Erik, and things were going well,” is all he’ll allow.

Steven Senne, AP

Then he asks to see the image again. Here, he wants to make something clear. “For the record, I’m not flexing my biceps,” he notes. “I wasn’t doing that. Definitely not flexing my biceps."

True to form. He’s changed plenty over the years, but he’d still bristle at that sort of attention-grabbing bravado.

Remember, perspective is everything here: It was a year ago this week Luck suffered a setback in his shoulder that would shelve him for the rest of 2017 and spur him to venture overseas uncertain if he’d ever play football again. Now he’s celebrating touchdowns in the end zone in New England, throwing for 829 yards and seven touchdowns across two games, carrying the Colts the way he did in 2012 ... and 2013 ... and 2014 ... and 2016.

During his lost year Luck crossed paths with his old coach, and Arians could sense the void was wearing on him. “Of all the people I’ve coached, he and Peyton (Manning) are the on the same wavelength in terms of it just killing them to miss time,” Arians says. “He had a plan. I just kept telling him, ‘When you’re back, you’ll know.’ I think he knows it now.”

Reich was the first to catch a pass from Luck back in the spring, away from the cameras and on an empty practice field at the Colts’ facility. “I’m just going to be honest with myself,” Luck kept telling his new coach, a U-turn from the fall before, where Luck raced to get back, tried to ignore the persistent pain in his shoulder and paid dearly for it.

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One of the reasons Luck decided to slow the process this time: He was tired of playing hurt. He’d been doing it for years, and the mental toll had robbed him of his joy for football. One former teammates remembers Luck spending almost every day of the 2016 season in the training room. He’d miss practice at least once a week, then grit out 40 throws on Sunday.

“I knew if I was going to play football again, it was gonna have to be without a governor,” Luck says. “It was not gonna be going out there at 60 or 70 percent. I can do this, but maybe not that ... it wasn’t fair to me or anybody.

“If I was gonna play football, that was a non-negotiable for me.”

Note that Luck used the word if twice there. The Comeback was never a sure thing, and the darkness and doubt he waded through last winter is part of what’s made this start to the season all the more gratifying, no matter where the Colts sit in the standings. His close relationship with Ballard, the GM he’s had many an hour-long conversation with over the last 18 months, has fortified his belief that the Colts are building this the right way, that the payoff will come down the line.

“No one’s freaking out, no one’s freaking out,” Luck says. “We’ll be good.”

It will take time. Ballard stresses this relentlessly. His QB echoed the same sentiment. Asked recently about the truest measure of success for this season, Luck cited improvement before he mentioned wins and losses.

Meanwhile, teammates have marveled at Luck’s rise from the depths of 2017. He didn’t throw a football until late last spring. He had to tell himself to calm down before the first day of training camp. He had to fight off a flood of emotions while he sat on his stool in the locker room before his first game in two years, mind racing, nerves revving, soaking in a day he wasn’t sure he’d see again.

Scott Horner, scott.horner@indystar.com

It was the team’s fourth practice in training camp when Luck first sizzled, stirring scenes from seasons past, giving hope to a team that had none a year ago. At one point in the workout, after Luck had converted six or seven passes in a row, veteran lineman Anthony Castonzo turned to Slauson. “Wow, Andrew’s back,” he told him.

A new target of Luck’s, tight end Eric Ebron, has seen the rise.

“I don’t know if you guys have ever been injured, but I’ve had surgery before and when you come back, you be tip-toeing, that’s just how it is,” Ebron says. “It’s a long process to come back healthy. I think you’re finally seeing him just say, ‘F it,’ and go out there and do his thing.”

Luck’s been doing his thing despite a leaky roster, a ridiculous run of injuries and a recent spate of drops. “They’re playing without some of their best players now,” Arians notes. “Get one or two of them back, like Anthony, and that’ll make all the difference.”

Until then the franchise quarterback will carry the load and keep them competitive, same as he’s done since the day he arrived. A brutal early-season schedule softens over the next two months, and as well as Luck is playing, there’s no reason to think the Colts won’t have a chance in every game. He’s their hope.

It was early last summer, on one of those empty practice fields and before he’d really tested the arm again, when Luck first started to see that hope again. He remained cautious, mindful of the hard lessons the last two years had taught him. But this rehabilitation was different. It felt different. Looked different.

“If you make it back all the way,” he was asked, “Do you think your arm will feel as good as it did before this whole nightmare started?”

“No,” Luck said. “Better.”

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

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