Matt Hasselbeck on Andrew Luck: “He takes pride in not showering”

Andrew Luck is a unique guy. We all know that by now: I mean, how many NFL quarterbacks have their own book club? How many quarterbacks congratulate defenders on a nice hit? How many quarterbacks show up to training camp saying he loved being able to wear the same clothes for two weeks?

That’s the Colts’ franchise quarterback, and it’s easy to understand why people love him. But that orneriness? That’s genuine.

Former Colts backup quarterback and Andrew Luck’s friend Matt Hasselbeck appeared on Mike and Mike in the Morning this morning as he begins his job at ESPN, and he opened up about what Luck is like.

“He’s kind of like a college kid still,” Hasselbeck said. “Does that make sense? He takes pride in not showering kind of thing.

“There’s definitely goofiness,” he continued. “And I’ll say that the conversations in that quarterback room were very different than the conversations in the quarterbacks room around the league, I’m sure.”

For example?

“I remember we were getting ready to play the New Orleans Saints or somebody, and he wanted to talk about the political landscape in Europe for the first five minutes,” Hasselbeck explained. “There was something big going on in Scotland.”

That’s right, Luck wanted to talk about Europe’s political landscape at the beginning of the team’s quarterback meeting. Luck also got along well with Hasselbeck’s kids, helping them with homework.

“I mean, Andrew Luck is closer in age to my kids than he is to me, so if he’d come over for dinner, naturally the conversations would be like Andrew and my kids talking and then basically be having a conversation with ourselves. Which is also very nice,” Hasselbeck said.

So the follow-up question to Hasselbeck was whether Luck is like a glorified baby sitter? “A little bit, and actually slash tutor for homework,” he replied. “But it wasn’t just Luck, we had like three or four Stanford guys – we had some smart guys, on the Colts they do. I had a little distribution list, like math homework. I tell you, fifth grade math gets kind of tough.”

Hasselbeck also talked about the expectations for Luck and how the concern is overblown.

“I don’t think they’ve forgotten [how good Luck is]; I think he got anointed right away,” Hasselbeck said. “He came out and had a great game week one, year one, and all the sudden everyone was like, ‘yup, he’s legit!.’ And so I think expectations were probably put up there, but he’s played great. I think, what, three Pro Bowls in the first three years? He played great. So I think some people are just kind of very surprised that he didn’t have a great game last year, but then some people are like, ‘we’ve already anointed this guy and what has he really done?’ He doesn’t care about any of that stuff. They’re grinding. They’ve got a little bit of a new offense, new coaching staff, they’ve got some new players. I think they’re just excited to get back to football, that team, and I think he’s just ready to show people how he really expects to play each and every year.”