Luck is an interesting one. Do you shoot for/develop someone who can do what he does and more (Stagg), change the game-plan completely, or do you accept his strength and put players who complement it around him, as Melbourne do with
Johnson. The main difference being that
Johnson is a harder front-on defender and Luck excels at cover cleaning up the gaps and assisting. And, boy, does he have some mopping-up to do!
I think Luck, for all his limitations, has found what he can do well -- tackle. He never racked up massive counts at the Cowboys, he didn't play too much in 04 and 05, but he has grown here. Either he has defined his role, or it's been defined for him.
Luck's tackle stats. Time with Cowboys in bold.
2001: 285 (23 MT, N/A IF) 16 Games
2002: 227 (33 MT, N/A IF) 18 Games
2003: 444 (29 MT, 19 IF) 22 Games
2004: 190 (18 MT, 12 IF) 11 Games
2005: 145 (15 MT, 3 IF) 9 Games
2006: 571 (28 MT, 26 IF) 24 Games
2007: 959 (34 MT, 33 IF) 26 Games
2008: 957 (47 MT, 44 IF) 25 Games
2009: 1053 (44 MT, 47 IF) 23 Games
His workload has increased immensely and so have the missed and ineffective amounts. That's to be expected, but there's no way a guy with his head on the ground that much should be captain. If he's to be captain someone else has to pick up the slack so he can contribute by improving the quality of his tackles or his speed in the kick-chase (and being a captain). Make his strengths even stronger. I notice that he picks the right time for an inspirational run when in the opposition's 20m but gets slaughtered, so becoming a metre eater is out. However, he runs good lines and maybe that can put to better use by developing a short passing game. Not a game-breaking one, just an effective one. That, of course, depends on not eating grass so much.