As Luck would have it

Or, you know, not.

Not, because at this point the inhabitants of the grassy knoll enter the picture, after Indianapolis Colts GM Chris Ballard announced they were shutting Andrew Luck down again, barely four days after he began throwing a football. Apparently there was some soreness in his surgical right shoulder, even though Luck was not, apparently, launching rockets. Word out of Indy is he was chucking it 30 or 40 yards downfield, but with nothing on it.

And so ...

And so now with the conspiracy theories.

Now the moment when the Blob was informed by an acquaintance who lives in Indy, and who has seen Luck on local TV a few times, that, beyond just the shoulder, the Colts' franchise QB looks seriously unhealthy. Pale, thin, shockingly frail. So there's that.

(Of course, when you've been virtually inactive since January, you're probably not going to look like some cartoon muscle-y superhero. So there's that, too).

Anyway ... the suspicion grows that the Colts are hiding something, fueled by the conventional wisdom that, when it comes to injuries, NFL teams tend to be less than forthright. Is there something else going on besides the shoulder? Was the shoulder itself far more extensively damaged than the Colts are letting on, necessitating a far more extensive surgical procedure than the simple labrum repair we've been led to believe?

I don't know. Maybe this really is just the Colts being super-cautious. Maybe it really is the customary recovery timeline for this sort of surgery. But ...

But it's been, what, nine months since the surgery? And yet Luck is only now beginning tentatively to throw. And  after just four days of throwing, his shoulder is hurting again. So it is reasonable to suspect that this is a lot more serious than the Colts have led us to believe, given that initially they were talking about him being ready for the start of the season.

Now we're six weeks past that, and he's no more ready than he was in August. So, yes, the grassy knoll people are starting to whisper among themselves.

Me?

I think now that his return this season is more than just problematical. And I didn't before.

So there's that, too.