Lock and load

OK. So I guess he's really not dead yet.

That would be Andrew Luck, of course, and sorry for the obligatory "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" reference, except not really, because there literally is no situation the Blob cannot relate to the funniest movie of all time. Anyway, in case you have been living in hermetically sealed bubble, Andrew Luck threw a football yesterday. In public.

(All right.  So in front of the media, then. And not a real football, but a kid football. And not, like, Joe Namath-dropping-one-from-60-yards-on-a-streaking-Don-Maynard throwing, but more like Joe-Namath-playing-in-the-backyard-with-the-grandkids throwing.)

Luck's deepest lob was about 20 yards. Most were in the swing pass range. Still, it was the first time anyone had seen him throw a football, even a fake one, since October. And it made all the happy talk from the Colts camp about Luck's progress sound much less like a bunch of people high on truly righteous weed, which perhaps was the point of the exercise.

Truth is, a whole lot professional skeptics (i.e., media folk) were starting to wonder just what the hell the Colts were talking about. Like, the way they always said Luck was making tremendous progress, but when asked if he was throwing yet, they'd always say "not yet."

Which left everyone trying to figure out what "tremendous progress" could possibly mean for a quarterback if he still wasn't throwing a football 17 months after a supposedly routine labrum procedure. What, his running form had improved? He was buttering his own toast again?

The entire thing, frankly, had gotten progressively more bizarre. There was the unexplained trip to Europe for the unexplained whatever. There was all the talk last summer that Luck would be back relatively early in the season, and then three weeks became four became five became shutting him down for the season. And, seriously, what was that whole Europe deal about?

Then came yesterday, and the big reveal: Luck has actually been throwing in secret for awhile, with actual footballs. How well, and how gingerly, we still don't know, because Luck and the Colts are still successfully hiding that just as they hid the fact he was throwing. At any rate, in front of the media, he was definitely throwing it gingerly.

Which still makes you wonder if this surgery was more extensive than anyone's letting on. Which still makes you wonder why Luck, head coach Frank Reich and the rest of the Colts hierarchy remain so supremely confident he'll be full-bore ready for a season that begins in less than three months.

Inquiring minds want to know. And I suppose they will.

At some point.