NFL Trade Rumors: Unhappy Andrew Luck May Force Indianapolis Colts To Trade Him After Mishandling Injury

The NFL trade rumors usually die down once the season is kicked off, but this year appears to be a major exception as reports are spreading that an unhappy Andrew Luck may be forcing the Indianapolis Colts to trade him.

On Sunday, just hours before the Colts kicked off their season with a blowout loss to the Los Angeles Rams, reports surfaced that Luck would miss much more than the one week that had initially been floated around. That led to speculation that the Colts had mishandled Luck’s injury by forcing him to play hurt last year, leading to the offseason shoulder surgery and the longer-than-expected recovery.

Then, ESPN’s Mike & Mike reported on Wednesday that Andrew Luck may be trying to find his way out of Indianapolis.

“That his unhappiness and perhaps some familial unhappiness–if you will, stems back beyond this, that maybe he felt that he’d played when he wasn’t 100 percent healthy,” Mike Greenberg said (via Indiana Sports Coverage). “He’s not playing now, and that there’s some talk with even that enormous contract and his enormous talent, that we could be seeing, right before our eyes, the end of the Andrew Luck era in Indianapolis.”

There were still plenty of question marks surrounding the Andrew Luck trade rumors, including just how the Colts would pull off a deal. The trend in the quarterback-reliant NFL has been to lock down any signal caller that shows signs of competency, so it would be unusual for the Colts to trade away their franchise quarterback, especially who came to them as a generational prospect.

It is likely that the Indianapolis Colts would not trade Andrew Luck, but if they did the team would likely expect a gigantic haul in return. It has become the norm to swap one, often two first-round draft picks just to have the opportunity to move into the top two slots of the draft and select a quarterback — and that is for an unproven quarterback. Luck’s play puts him in the top tier of NFL quarterbacks, so he would likely garner significantly more in return.

Colts QB Andrew Luck is back — but when can he play? – https://t.co/DK36YFtbVX #GoogleAlerts

— Michael P. McCarthy (@michaelp2153) September 3, 2017

While the Andrew Luck trade rumor has made the rounds pretty quickly and generated plenty of speculation, the official stance from Luck’s agent is that there is no animosity between the team and its franchise quarterback. Will Wilson, Luck’s agent, told reporter Bob Kravitz that there is no truth to the trade rumors.

According to Andrew Luck's agent, Will Wilson, there is absolutely no truth to the rumor that Luck is disgruntled and wants out of Indy.

— Bob Kravitz (@bkravitz) September 13, 2017

Despite these denials, the NFL trade rumors are likely to continue as long as Andrew Luck remains injured and the Colts continue to stumble. The latest projections have Luck out until early October at the earliest, so the rumor mill will have plenty more time to churn.

[Featured Image by Andy Lyons/Getty Images]