INDIANAPOLIS — Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck announced Saturday night he was retiring, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe. He was crying. He was catching his breath and apologizing.

Andrew Luck said he was retiring and his coach, Frank Reich, was watching with red eyes. He’d been crying.

Andrew Luck said he was retiring, and his general manager, Chris Ballard, was staring into the distance. He was listening. He was hurting. His eyes were red, too. When Luck thanked Ballard, the GM’s tears started to come again.

Andrew Luck said he was retiring, and his owner, Jim Irsay, squinted his eyes and nodded his head. He’s the one who seemed to see this coming. He’s the one who told us about “the 4-inch field between (Luck’s) ears” during that 2017 preseason when Luck’s shoulder injury wasn’t healing. The injury cost him the season and set him on the road he traveled Saturday night, tired of the pain, the injury now in his calf, his ankle, his head.

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“For the last four years or so,” Luck said, “I’ve been in this cycle of injury, pain, rehab – injury, pain, rehab – and it’s been unceasing, unrelenting, both in-season and offseason. And I felt stuck in it, and the only way I see out is to no longer play football. It’s taken my joy of this game away.”

Luck was booed off the field Saturday night when the Colts played the Chicago Bears in the third preseason game, the news of his retirement breaking on Twitter during the second half. The fans who stuck around, they booed Luck off the field. And he heard it.

“Yeah,” he said, “it hurt. I’ll be honest. It hurt.”

Even so, Luck sounded like a man at peace, a man who has stared into the abyss and turned away. Football, once his favorite hobby, the source of such childlike joy, had become his dark place. He said he had been thinking about retiring for about 10 days, calling it “a moment of clarity” when the idea finally started to take shape. He said he’d been tired.n

“I feel exhausted,” he said, sounding very much that, “and quite tired.”

As Luck talked on, cracking a bad joke – the only kind he ever told, the big goofball – about disappointing his mom by wearing a ratty shirt to his retirement, Ballard’s chin dropped lower and lower. He was staring into the carpet, into the future, the past, into whatever thoughts the general manager of one of the most improved rosters in football has when he sees the centerpiece, the franchise quarterback, announce his retirement with perhaps a decade left to play.

When Luck talked on, saying he returned from that lost 2017 season “simply because I liked throwing the ball to my friends, and I loved throwing the ball to T.Y. Hilton,” Reich was looking around the room, trying to make sense of this unfathomable time and place.

When Luck talked on, mentioning his dear friend Jacoby Brissett and admitting that he “was very resentful of this fun, happy dude” – and then saying how wrong he’d been to feel that way about his backup quarterback, and the Colts’ starter going forward – his wife was watching with tears in her eyes.

Luck, the most private of public superstars, was opening up in a way he never has, telling us just how hard these last four years have been.

“I’ve been stuck in this process,” he said. “I haven’t been able to live the life I want to live. It’s taken the joy out of this game. After 2016 when I played in pain, and wasn’t regularly able to practice, I made a vow I wouldn’t go down that path again. The only way forward is to remove myself from this cycle. I came to the proverbial fork in the road, and made a vow if I ever did again I would choose me, in a sense.”

Luck threw us for one final curve a week ago, taking the field before the preseason game against the Browns and being caught on video running sideways, which he hadn’t been able to do, and throwing passes and smiling. He was laughing. And now we know why.

“I was thinking,” Luck said, “this is the last time I’ll throw the ball at Lucas Oil Stadium in a Colts uniform.”

He knew a week ago. As sudden as this decision was for the rest of us, Luck and his bosses – Reich, Ballard, Irsay – have known for almost a week. That’s bad news, because that makes this decision sound less rash, and more permanent.

This is the most shocking NFL retirement since all-time league rushing leader Jim Brown in 1966 at age 30, and perhaps the most shocking NFL retirement of all time.

“He’s leaving almost a half-billion on the table!” Irsay was saying, loudly, during his news conference, but also saying he understood. He knows Andrew. He knows this guy is different.

And it’s true: Andrew Luck is not like most people. He never played football for the money. He played it for the joy, and he’s telling us the joy is gone.

In the moment Saturday night, he was feeling relief. You could see it as Luck’s news conference rolled on and his answers began coming faster, the smiles growing, the memories of Hilton and Robert Mathis and Adam Vinatieri flowing.

Andrew Luck feels this shocker is the right decision. For his sake, please, let it be so.