Less than two weeks into training camp, there seems to be momentum building behind elevating Anthony Richardson into the QB1 spot on the Indianapolis Colts. I’m going to say something now that football fans hate to hear.
Be patient.
Really, nobody likes to hear that. Waiting is no fun. On Christmas morning, no one ever looked at the biggest box with their name on it and said, “maybe I’ll wait and open this one later. I’ll appreciate it more when I’m older.”
Anthony Richardson could be special if the Indianapolis Colts don’t ruin him
Nope. You ripped into that package and played. You played hard. Sometimes, so hard that by dinner, that new Lego set was already broken.
Anthony Richardson is a lot bigger and tougher than your average Lego, but Shane Steichen and Cam Turner had best be careful. He is still a very young QB with very limited experience. Being patient may be the boring play, but it’s also the right one.
I know Anthony Richardson has looked very good in practice. I know his attitude has always been outstanding. And everyone knows what kind of athlete he is. None of that changes this fundamental truth.
Over the past five years – three in college and two in the NFL – Anthony Richardson has attempted fewer than 750 passes. Compare that to last season’s offensive rookie of the year, Jayden Daniels, who attempted twice as many before coming to the NFL.
The other rookie QB who hit the ground running last year, Bo Nix, attempted almost three times as many passes as Richardson has thrown in five years.
In hindsight, Richardson never should have been drafted as high as he was. The Colts saw what befell Trey Lance, a similarly gifted athlete with even less experience, two years before, and nonetheless pulled the trigger. They fell in love with Richardson's potential and figured they could be the team to buck the odds and transform an inexperienced player into a star.
That could still happen. The problem is, it requires an NFL club doing two things that they are normally loath to do.
First, it means they have to sit the budding face of the franchise on the bench for a year or two. Green Bay did it with Jordan Love (after previously doing it with Aaron Rodgers). KC did it with Patrick Mahomes. It can happen, but it requires a strong coach, a disciplined management structure, and an owner who lets his employees do the jobs for which he hired them.
Does that sound like recent-vintage Indianapolis?
The second thing the team must do is introduce Daniel Jones into the equation. If you are indeed going to sit your future star, you need a QB for the present. But it has to be a very particular kind of QB, and I don’t think the Colts have him in Jones.
The NFL is not a teaching league. Sure, there is teaching that goes on. But if you don’t have the fundamentals of your position down by the time you hit the show, it’s unlikely you are going to learn them. That’s what college is for. Learning. The NFL is for winning.
Teams win when they practice well. Quarterbacks, more than any other position, require practice reps. But if you intend to develop a player like Richardson while he is riding the bench, you need to devote a fair amount of practice time to him. He needs first-team reps. He needs a lot them.
Coaches hate sacrificing their starters' reps. Especially their starting quarterback’s reps. It takes a special type of QB to thrive under those circumstances. Usually, he has to be a very composed, experienced veteran who has been through the wars and can perhaps afford to cede some practice time to the guy who will one day replace him.
What it takes is Steve DeBerg. DeBerg was a decent spot starter for 17 years in the NFL, but what he is most remembered for today is being the starter in San Francisco when they were breaking in Joe Montana, and then the starter in Tampa when they began to develop Steve Young. Though he was barely older than Montana, DeBerg had the temperament to perform in those conditions.
I’m not sure Daniel Jones does.
Though he has been in the league for six years, Jones is still an unfinished product. That’s not entirely his fault. I don’t even think it’s primarily his fault. Jones has a great deal of talent. Maybe not Anthony Richardson-level talent, but clearly NFL-caliber ability as both a passer and runner.
The problem is he has been stuck in NFL purgatory on a Giants’ team that proved utterly incapable of supporting him. He played behind a perennially terrible line and never had elite weapons to throw to. It is a poorly-run organization that did not take care of its asset.
So if Jones is the starter, he needs all the practice time he can get. That is the catch-22 the Colts find themselves in.
None of us knows how this QB battle will play out. Not even the coaches. But Indianapolis had best stick to some core principles when making their evaluation.
It’s great that Richardson has looked good in practice, but that means nothing until he does it with pads on and going at full tilt.
It’s great that Pat McAfee has a man-crush on Richardson and thinks he looks great in photographs. But we all know he looks great. Now he has to play great.
And if Jones does outplay Richardson through camp and the preseason but Indianapolis chooses Richardson because of how much they have “invested” in him, they deserve the failure that is likely headed their way.
Anthony Richardson could still win the starting job for the Indianapolis Colts and become the next iteration of Josh Allen. But based on what we last saw from him, he is not there yet. And Shane Steichen had best not put him on the field until he’s as certain as he can be that his 23-year-old QB (yes, that age is correct) Richardson is ready to shine.