Andrew Luck’s recent decision has me dumbfounded. His choice to stay at Stanford next year has been called admirable, courageous, smart. If Luck went to the NFL draft he would be the sure-fire first overall pick from the Carolina Panthers. They even said so.
There are so many things that could go wrong here. The first being, he’s throwing away millions, even if he is the number one pick next year. Say Luck plays in the NFL until age 37. That will be 15 years in the NFL. If he left now, it would be 16 years in the NFL. In other words, he loses one year of pay. How much is that? Sam Bradford is guaranteed slightly over $8 million this year. Andrew Luck just took eight million, and threw it in his Stanford colored garbage can.
Luck could get hurt. Ask Sam Bradford’s shoulder how it feels about giving up the number one pick to come back to Oklahoma. Bradford barely played his senior season after having two major shoulder dislocations. He still was the number one pick the next year, but not only did he give up a year of NFL pay to get his shoulder blown up, who knows if that problem will arise again.
Luck’s stock could simply drop. Jake Locker was considered by some to be the number one overall pick in last year’s draft. Bradford/Locker would be similar to the debates of Manning/Leaf, or even Eli Manning and Phillip Rivers. Locker went back to try to get his team to the Rose Bowl.
Washington instead started the year 3-6, and had to win their last three just to become bowl eligible. Locker got hurt during the season and didn’t play in the Oregon game. He had games that would make anyone question whether he was even fit for the NFL going 4-20 with 1TD 2INT vs. Nebraska, 7-14 with 2INT vs. Stanford, and 10-21 with an INT vs. UCLA.
Where is Locker projected to go this year? He’ll definitely benefit from Luck’s decision, but most mock drafts have him going between 10-20. How much will that cost him? If it was last year’s draft, about $35 million guaranteed.
Matt Leinart is another painfully prominent example of this. Leinart had everything. The national title. The first overall pick. Every NFL owner salivating.
He stayed at USC, didn’t win the title, and instead of being drafted number one, his stock fell to tenth to the Cardinals. The drop lost him tens of millions of dollars, and now he’s floating around the NFL, carrying a clipboard. Wouldn’t he be doing the same thing if he was the number 1 pick? It’s not like going back to college one year made him a bad quarterback. Well, yes. But he’d be holding a clipboard with a much bigger wallet.
Albert Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
It’s great the Luck wants to get his degree, no one should be bashing a kid for getting an education. But you’ve got all of your life to get your degree. You have a short window of time where you can make money playing quarterback. One of these days these kids will learn.
Unfortunately, I have the feeling I’ll be using Andrew Luck as another example of going back to school hurting a kid next year.
With the whole NFL labor disputes going on right now, maybe it is a good thing Luck is spending another year in college…