Philadelphia Eagles: No, Andrew Luck isn’t unretiring, stop it.

When teams – like the Philadelphia Eagles or otherwise – are trying to execute a big trade, they’re going to do everything in their power to try to stack the deck in their favor.

“Oh, we’re just getting flooded with offers” or maybe “You know, player X really doesn’t like playing in cold/warm/temperate weather” heck, you’ll occasionally even get teams floating hypothetical offers to the media via anonymous sources, like the reported package the Chicago Bears have offered for Carson Wentz’s services that centers around Nick Foles, Tarik Cohen, and a future first.

Oftentimes, these rumors are more to do with intra-front office grandstanding than with drumming up buzz from fans one way or another, but frankly, that’s just how business goes down in the big city.

As a general rule, these sort of hearsay-s should be taken with a grain of salt and thus aren’t really worth getting too worked up about one way or another, but sometimes, a rumor will bubble up to the surface that is just so wacky that one has to dig a little deeper into it and wonder why anyone would give it any merit.

Buckle up, my friends, for I’ve found a doozy.

Unretirement talks are simply a leverage play versus the Philadelphia Eagles.

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Andrew Luck is not going to unretire.

Darius Leonard has said so, Nyheim Hynes has so, heck, even the Indianapolis Colts’ owner Jim Irsay has said so on the record. So, why are rumors still swirling that Luck may ultimately view 2021 as the perfect opportunity to unhang up his cleats and return to the field?

One word: Leverage.

Regardless of the bizarre text message rumors Pat McAfee unconscionably opted to spread on his sports show; there is little reason to believe that Luck has any real interest in returning to the game. Sure, he’s only 31-years-old, eight years younger than Phillip Rivers, but when the ex-Stanford Cardinal gave his farewell address, he called the choice the “hardest decision of his life.”

But wait, it gets worse, as initially relayed by ESPN.

"“I haven’t been able to live the life I want to live. It’s taken the joy out of this game … the only way forward for me is to remove myself from football.“I’m in pain; I’m still in pain,” he said. “It’s been four years of this pain, rehab cycle. It’s a myriad of issues — calf strain, posterior ankle impingement, high ankle sprain. Part of my journey going forward will be figuring out how to feel better.”"

Now, if you don’t mind me asking, where in there does it sound like Luck’s decision to retire was on a whim?

Yeah, it really doesn’t.

While Luck could conceivably have recaptured his love of the game, or finally feels physically right enough to return to the field and try it all again, this isn’t a situation like that of Alex Smith where the game was taken away from him by a freak injury. No, Luck decided to walk away because, by his own admission, the best way to move forward with his life was to do so without football.

So, if Luck is really, genuinely not interested in coming back to the football field as anything but a fan, why are these rumors coming up now?

Well, because he’s a really, really good football player, and the Colts are reportedly in a bidding war for Carson Wentz.

Even if these rumors are 100 percent generated from outside of the organization, which they seem to be, the idea that maybe the Colts won’t need to trade for Wentz because they have Luck on the way back may scare Howie Roseman and company enough to accept a lesser deal out of fear that they may be down to one buyer in the not too distant future.

It’s the very same reason why the Houston Rockets 100 percent weren’t going to trade James Harden until they did, and the same reason why the Jacksonville Jaguars wouldn’t trade Jalen Ramsey for even five first-round picks, only to ship him out to LA for a much more meager package one month later.

That, fortunately, or not, is just how things go when multi-hundreds of millions of dollar organizations are trying to execute transactions with nine-figure ramifications. I mean, there’s literally a rumor circulating now that Wentz’s preferred destination is to Indianapolis, which could surely be looked at as a way to dissuade Chicago from giving up their best package for a disinterested signal caller.

Eh, can’t knock the hustle, I guess.

Who knows, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Andrew Luck will return, or the Colts will instead win the Deshaun Watson sweepstakes, or even make a trade for Matt Ryan, which is reportedly now a rumor that’s getting traction. But between you and me, I would be absolutely shocked if the Philadelphia Eagles didn’t take their negotiations between the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts to the wire without either team dropping out due to landing another franchise signal-caller.