Colts pushed Richardson into the deep end. He's still there
Demoting their long-term hope at quarterback gets Indy's season off on the wrong foot.
Amid the quintillions of words that were spewed over the airwaves during the seven months between NFL games, the sentence “Daniel Jones will be a starting quarterback in 2025 and Anthony Richardson won’t be” was never voiced.
Jones had been left available by the New York Giants, in favor of Russell Wilson and rookie Jaxson Dart. Richardson was the fourth pick in the first round of the 2023 draft, a tremendously attractive sleeper to succeed Unitas, Manning and Luck in Colts’ folklore.
Would Richardson turn out to be Cam Newton or Lamar Jackson or some sort of plutonium-filled combination? After all, he had done things at the scouting combine that no quarterback had. He was 6-foot-4 and 244 pounds — right, President Trump’s body double — and yet he ran the 40 yards in 4.4 seconds. His vertical jump, always crucial for a quarterback, was 40 ½ inches. His hands measured 10 ½ inches. There were rough edges, to be sure, but Richardson would obviously vault or outrun them. Richardson was given the starting QB position in that first training camp. Why make him start earning things now?
But on Tuesday, the Colts said Jones would start in Week 1. Richardson’s agent, Deiric Jackson, said he and the Colts “have a lot to discuss,” and that “trust is a big factor that is, at best, questionable right now.”
As for the Colts, coach Shane Steichen said Jones won the job because he was better with the details, and that Richardson wouldn’t regain the job unless Jones suffers one of his frequent injuries. “I don’t want to have a short leash,” Steichen said.
The trade rumor foundry began belching smoke almost immediately, but Indianapolis can’t hang Jones out to dry without a proven backup, and all it has are rookie Ryan Leonard and second-year man Jason Bean. So Richardson is likely to stay there and become a crowd favorite again whenever Jones reverts to the giveaways that ran him out of the Meadowlands.
General manager Chris Ballard admitted on Tuesday that Richardson, only 21 at the time, shouldn’t have gotten the steering wheel so early. Ballard was also the general manager when that decision was made, and Steichen, who was given credit for helping develop Jalen Hurts in Philadelphia, was also the coach. They clearly thought Richardson would be able to skip the usual steps.
What they ignored was history. Richardson had started 13 games at Florida and was 6-7. He really played only one season, 2022, in which he passed for 17 touchdowns, ran for nine, and threw nine interceptions. His completion percentage of 53.8 would have looked good in the 1950s but not now. He did have a phenomenal 453-yard day with two TD passes against Tennessee.
Would Richardson become Jackson? The comparison was asymmetrical from the start. Jackson started 34 games at Louisville and won the Heisman Trophy, threw 69 touchdown passes and ran for 50 more TDs. He needed refinement in the pros, and he only started seven games as a rookie, and now he’s a career 64.9 percent passer with two MVP awards. Last year he threw 41 touchdowns with four picks.
Would Richardson become Newton? Well, Newton only started 14 games at Auburn, because his career was sidetracked when he was accused of stealing a fellow student’s computer while at Florida. Newton served in a diversion program, then transferred to Blinn JC. But those 14 Auburn games? Newton won every one, including the national championship over Oregon. He started for the Carolina Panthers as a rookie and won the MVP in his fifth year, and played Denver in a Super Bowl. His career wasn’t smooth or particularly happy, but he was far more ready than Richardson was.
How about Josh Allen? He started at a JC, then came to Wyoming and had 26 starts, winning 16. Again, his NFL learning curve was a hairpin turn, because he hadn’t learned to manage situations or moderate his throws, but it didn’t take long. He only started 11 games as a rookie and is now the reigning MVP and Buffalo is 76-34 when he starts, and he has 195 arm-generated touchdowns and 95 through his feet.
As a rookie, Patrick Mahomes didn’t start until the final game of the season, but had a 29-start foundation at Texas Tech. Bo Nix was in college five years with 61 starts. Brock Purdy started 46 games at Iowa State. Jalen Hurts started 42 games in his college career and his teams (Alabama and Oklahoma) were 38-4.
Richardson, who was unfortunately nicknamed AR-15 while at Florida, got sucked into Catch-22. He needed to stay on the field, but he didn’t know enough about the pro game to anticipate and dodge pressure consistently, and so he suffered a concussion in his second-ever game and a sprained shoulder three weeks later, which meant he couldn’t stay on the field.
His second season was healthier but no better. He bailed out of a game against Houston in the third quarter, saying he needed a “breather” for one play, and subsequently lost his job to Joe Flacco, who is older than the two-minute warning. Richardson came back and played well but missed the final two games. He’s hurt now because he got surprised by a blitzing linebacker in Baltimore two weeks ago.
Ballard shouldn’t be faulted for drafting Richardson. It wasn’t a great year for QBs, but the Colts had been blindsided by Andrew Luck’s retirement during training camp in 2019 and hadn’t found an answer. Richardson was only the third QB taken in the first round, after Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud led it off. The next was Will Levis, who went to Tennessee at pick No. 33 and has already lost his starting position.
A pause to learn and absorb and get healthy could resurrect Richardson. Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold and Geno Smith found second and third lives. All were far more ready for the NFL, originally, than Richardson was. But whether Richardson can ever recharge in Lucas Oil Stadium is a deeper question. If Ballard & Co. wanted long-term solutions they wouldn’t have pursued Jones. He has played 16 games the past two years with the Giants and only made it through a 16-game season once, in the playoff season of 2022. As a rookie Jones won over New York by throwing 24 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. He lost that ephemeral love by throwing 42 and 25 the next four seasons.
No, it appears Jones became the Colts’ quarterback through the same hasty, wishful process that Richardson did. And a team with a January-worthy roster now starts that pursuit with a backpack of doubt. It’s one thing to make a mistake. It’s quite another to watch that mistake start winning games, and maybe championships, in another ballpark.
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Although there is some threshold of physical talent required for a winning quarterback, equally important is the ability to process information almost instantaneously, to see where the other 21 players are and to anticipate where they are likely to be. It’s unreasonable to expect Richardson to be able to do that with such limited experience, but are there any indications that he’ll get there eventually? Most quarterbacks never do. (Jay Cutler comes immediately to mind.)
Long term Colts fan here.
The situation was mis-managed from the start by asking him to play right away. The dearly departed owner, who was not at the height of his intellectual powers, made that call.
The GM and HC seats are very warm. And it’s not fair to pro bowl veterans (Jonathan Taylor, Pittman, Quentin Nelson, DeForest Buckner) to continue to play a guy who is likely to make just enough mistakes to get beat in a weak division that can be won with 10 games.
I say bring him in during specific situations and let him and JT run like hell. It’s the only thing he’s good at, right now, so let him go. And if he gets hurt, so be it. He’s injury-prone anyways.