INDIANAPOLIS – Andrew Luck was different on Sunday. A good kind of different.
For so much of 2015, Luck had been different. Not in the good way.
Through one half of 2015, Luck was not the same quarterback compared to the Pro Bowl-caliber player everyone saw in his first three NFL seasons.
On Sunday, Luck got back to the version fans, and his teammates, have known so well.
T.Y. Hilton knew what he was going to see from No. 12 well before Sunday's 4:25 p.m. EST kickoff.
"(Luck) was very different (this week)," Hilton said after Sunday's 27-24 victory. "He came out of that Monday game (at Carolina) knowing he wasn't playing like himself. He said, 'You're going to see a different Andrew this week. I'm going to play different.' That's what he did.
"He went back to being Andrew."
The Luck those are used to seeing put together his most efficient 60 minutes of football seen this season.
He also did it against the league's top-ranked defense, a unit that one week earlier held Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers to just 77 passing yards.
Luck was 21-of-36 for 252 yards on Sunday, throwing for two touchdowns, and most importantly, committing zero turnovers.
"Andrew played lights out," Chuck Pagano said after the game.
-Coming into Sunday, the Denver defense had allowed an NFL-best 171.9 passing yards this season. Luck threw for 252 yards on Sunday.
-Denver was allowing opponents to convert just 31 percent of their third-downs this year (second best in the NFL). On Sunday, Luck and the Colts were 12-of-20 (60 percent) on the money down, helping the Colts control the ball for 17 more minutes than the Broncos.
-When things did bog down through the air, Luck ran six times for 34 yards. His offensive line allowed just one sack in 36 pass attempts (Denver had been sacking quarterbacks once every nine attempts this year).
This was the guy that was the ultimate recruiting tool for the Colts this offseason in trying to attract free agents.*
When would the "normal" Luck resurface?*
That was a question no one expected to have linger for this long in 2015.
On Sunday, despite the odds being heavily against them, Luck and the Colts showed what 2015 was supposed to look like.
"I think it's probably a little bit of soul searching in the building - players - figuring out who we want to be," Luck said of the difference on Sunday.
"The truth of the matter is we have the pieces. That's pretty darn obvious. With all the respect for every opponent we've played, we were also committing some terrible self-inflicted negatives. We didn't do that today."
