On Thursday April 26th the NFL draft was held in Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The event was a culmination of every team in the NFL and every qualified and desired NCAA football player. By the end of the first night, the top 32 picks had been chosen and we were all ready for day 2. In the following days and weeks we will be breaking down a number of the top draft picks to analyze what potential injuries that each of them are going to be prone to suffering in the NFL. Our first installment is going to be Andrew Luck, now with the Indianapolis Colts, and formally with the Stanford Cardinals.
Andrew Luck stands 6’3” tall and weighs in somewhere around 210lbs. Ironically enough, most analysts compare him to Peyton Manning, who stands only 2 inches taller and 20 pounds heavier. This would immediately bring to surface the neck injuries that Peyton has been known for lately. For more information on the neck issues that Peyton has, please CLICK HERE.
The primary issues that I see with Andrew Luck lie in the coaching and the actual transition to the NFL. Most NFL teams take time to “re-teach” players how to throw, evident with Tim Tebow in Denver. This creates major issues, as most of these quarterbacks are used to throwing a certain way all of their lives and now they have to use the same muscles in a different manor, creating the opportunity for injury.
Repetitive motion injuries in my opinion are the greatest risk to any new NFL quarterback. In college, players have to go to class, and some have jobs as well as being an athlete. In the NFL, you are a football player, which are your classes, job and your sport. This creates a great strain on the bodies of these players as they constantly work, rather than having a break, regardless of physical shape entering the league.
Primarily, I fear that there may be tendon and muscle damage to the shoulder of Andrew Luck in the first few years of being in the league. When Indianapolis drafted Peyton Manning in 1998, they pretty much redesigned the offense around him, which I seriously doubt will happen in Luck’s case. This means that he will have to work harder to make the throws to the receivers that Manning has already groomed to his liking. This will cause Luck to make throws that he is not accustomed to making due to the sheer speed and precision in which the NFL game moves.
Our approach at Surgical Alternative would be to place Luck on a regimen of SET bodywork, deep tissue massage, and energetic release therapy as preventative maintenance to alleviate the stresses that he will endure throughout his career. This would involve focus on his throwing shoulder, his legs and his torso to make sure that all is working properly and that his tendons, muscles and bones all work as a finely tuned machine.
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