Jim Irsay is giving up on Andrew Luck returning to Colts

Jim Irsay has clung to the possibility of star quarterback Andrew Luck making a return to football, but the Colts owner has seemingly changed his tune.

“You know, I don’t think so — I really don’t,” Irsay told NFL.com Tuesday. “I think that door’s closed.”

When Irsay addressed Luck’s decision to retire in a press conference just before the start of the 2019 season, he referenced Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods as athletes who’d made successful comebacks after stepping away.

“I don’t rule it out,” he said.

And as recently as February, Irsay continued to dwell on how difficult it was to come to terms with Luck’s retiring. He admitted he tried to highlight some of the benefits for quarterbacks in the modern NFL.

But a day after wide receiver T.Y. Hilton told “Good Morning Football” he didn’t expect to see the 31-year-old Luck back in his No. 12 jersey. Irsay shared a similar sentiment. He maintains the notion that it was one of the most excruciating moments in his career, saying that he “sometimes wonders if that was just a bad dream I had.”

Nevertheless, Irsay wishes Luck, the No. 1 overall pick in 2012, nothing but the best. And it appears he’s finally coming to terms with it.

“So, I love Andrew, I wish him well,” he said. “He’s raising his daughter, Lucy, and I just hope for him to have an incredible life and that sort of thing. But I don’t see it coming back around. If it did, then great, that’d be a great story. You know, Jordan was gone for two years and then back.

“But it seems a lot longer. I can’t personally believe that it’s only a year and a half ago that it happened. I mean, it seems like five years ago, it really does … a long time ago. So I don’t really see that being a possibility, but you never know.”