[JJJ]

And Luck mentioned here along with others (including other sports) who retired young.

n the winter of 1973, the novelist and sportswriter Jack Ludwig profiled Montreal Canadiens goaltender Ken Dryden for Maclean’s magazine. At 25 years old, Dryden was already extremely decorated: Over the past two seasons he’d won a Stanley Cup, a Conn Smythe Trophy for postseason MVP, and a Calder Trophy for rookie of the year, in that order.
But Dryden, according to Ludwig’s descriptions, was Not Your Typical Hockey Guy. He was a horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing Ivy Leaguer from Cornell who “looked something like Clark Kent” and “was shockingly grammatical in speech.” After Dryden won his first Stanley Cup, Ludwig wrote, the goalie spent the summer studying the effects of pollution on fishermen in Virginia with Ralph Nader. Before Ludwig met Dryden, an NHL goal judge prepped him: “He’s so unlike a hockey player—you’ll see.”
That spring, the Canadiens won another title, Dryden’s second. The goalie then spent the entire 1973-74 season employed by a white-shoe Toronto law firm, of all places, holding out from Montreal for higher pay while preparing for his non-hockey future. Having secured both, he returned to the team for five more seasons, winning four more Stanley Cups; at the age of 31 he up and retired in his prime, saying he wanted to write a book and take the bar and get on with the rest of his life. He compared his emotions to “the way you feel when you’re going to get married.”
Forty years after that Maclean’s story, in a 2013 piece for Grantland, my colleague Robert Mays wrote about another compelling if slightly unorthodox young athlete, Andrew Luck, the then-24-year-old Indianapolis Colts quarterback who had gone first overall in the 2012 draft and was considered the future of the NFL. Like Dryden, who earned the starting job from longtime stalwart Rogie Vachon, Luck had replaced a franchise legend, Peyton Manning. Luck’s physical attributes were a bit jockier than Dryden’s—a “once-in-a-generation specimen,” Mays wrote of Luck, with a forearm that “looks like the barrel of a Louisville Slugger”—but his wonkish aura was much the same.
He used modus operandi in conversation; he was really, really into Settlers of Catan; he and his then girlfriend (and now wife) had both studied architecture at Stanford, where he led the Cardinal to their first bowl game in years. He may not have enjoyed Dryden’s improbable early successes once he turned pro, but by his third NFL season, in 2014, the Colts had made it to the AFC championship game and fallen to the Patriots in what felt like a rite of passage and the beginning of a new era. Instead, that would prove to be the furthest Indianapolis would advance during Luck’s career.
Beset by injuries ranging from a lacerated kidney, to a torn labrum in his shoulder requiring surgery, to more recent calf and ankle problems, Luck missed half of the 2015 season and all of 2017. Still, he returned last year to play the best football of his career, completing 67 percent of his passes for 4,593 yards and 39 touchdowns and somehow powering the Colts to the playoffs despite a 1-5 start, earning him Comeback Player of the Year honors in more ways than one and leaving fans rightly jazzed about the team’s future. This summer, FanDuel SportsBook’s MVP odds put Luck second behind only Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, while its Super Bowl odds saw the Colts tied for fifth.
All of which is why it was such a shock on Saturday night to learn that Luck, not yet 30 years old, was retiring from football, smack dab in the prime of his life, becoming the latest in an alternately doomed and dazzling group of athletes whose careers ended not with the fireworks of celebration but with an afterburn of a lost star. Like Dryden, Luck used the language of marriage in his farewell announcement, and not just because he thanked his wife. He also talked about a commitment he had made to himself as he navigated, more than once, the demoralizing purgatory between the sideline and the spotlight. “I’ve come to the proverbial fork in the road,” Luck said. “I made a vow to myself that if I ever did again, I would choose me.” On Saturday night, he kept the promise he’d made.

https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/8/26/...etirements

[JJJ]

And Luck mentioned here along with others (including other sports) who retired young.

n the winter of 1973, the novelist and sportswriter Jack Ludwig profiled Montreal Canadiens goaltender Ken Dryden for Maclean’s magazine. At 25 years old, Dryden was already extremely decorated: Over the past two seasons he’d won a Stanley Cup, a Conn Smythe Trophy for postseason MVP, and a Calder Trophy for rookie of the year, in that order.
But Dryden, according to Ludwig’s descriptions, was Not Your Typical Hockey Guy. He was a horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing Ivy Leaguer from Cornell who “looked something like Clark Kent” and “was shockingly grammatical in speech.” After Dryden won his first Stanley Cup, Ludwig wrote, the goalie spent the summer studying the effects of pollution on fishermen in Virginia with Ralph Nader. Before Ludwig met Dryden, an NHL goal judge prepped him: “He’s so unlike a hockey player—you’ll see.”
That spring, the Canadiens won another title, Dryden’s second. The goalie then spent the entire 1973-74 season employed by a white-shoe Toronto law firm, of all places, holding out from Montreal for higher pay while preparing for his non-hockey future. Having secured both, he returned to the team for five more seasons, winning four more Stanley Cups; at the age of 31 he up and retired in his prime, saying he wanted to write a book and take the bar and get on with the rest of his life. He compared his emotions to “the way you feel when you’re going to get married.”
Forty years after that Maclean’s story, in a 2013 piece for Grantland, my colleague Robert Mays wrote about another compelling if slightly unorthodox young athlete, Andrew Luck, the then-24-year-old Indianapolis Colts quarterback who had gone first overall in the 2012 draft and was considered the future of the NFL. Like Dryden, who earned the starting job from longtime stalwart Rogie Vachon, Luck had replaced a franchise legend, Peyton Manning. Luck’s physical attributes were a bit jockier than Dryden’s—a “once-in-a-generation specimen,” Mays wrote of Luck, with a forearm that “looks like the barrel of a Louisville Slugger”—but his wonkish aura was much the same.
He used modus operandi in conversation; he was really, really into Settlers of Catan; he and his then girlfriend (and now wife) had both studied architecture at Stanford, where he led the Cardinal to their first bowl game in years. He may not have enjoyed Dryden’s improbable early successes once he turned pro, but by his third NFL season, in 2014, the Colts had made it to the AFC championship game and fallen to the Patriots in what felt like a rite of passage and the beginning of a new era. Instead, that would prove to be the furthest Indianapolis would advance during Luck’s career.
Beset by injuries ranging from a lacerated kidney, to a torn labrum in his shoulder requiring surgery, to more recent calf and ankle problems, Luck missed half of the 2015 season and all of 2017. Still, he returned last year to play the best football of his career, completing 67 percent of his passes for 4,593 yards and 39 touchdowns and somehow powering the Colts to the playoffs despite a 1-5 start, earning him Comeback Player of the Year honors in more ways than one and leaving fans rightly jazzed about the team’s future. This summer, FanDuel SportsBook’s MVP odds put Luck second behind only Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, while its Super Bowl odds saw the Colts tied for fifth.
All of which is why it was such a shock on Saturday night to learn that Luck, not yet 30 years old, was retiring from football, smack dab in the prime of his life, becoming the latest in an alternately doomed and dazzling group of athletes whose careers ended not with the fireworks of celebration but with an afterburn of a lost star. Like Dryden, Luck used the language of marriage in his farewell announcement, and not just because he thanked his wife. He also talked about a commitment he had made to himself as he navigated, more than once, the demoralizing purgatory between the sideline and the spotlight. “I’ve come to the proverbial fork in the road,” Luck said. “I made a vow to myself that if I ever did again, I would choose me.” On Saturday night, he kept the promise he’d made.

https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2019/8/26/...etirements