INDIANAPOLIS — This is what failure looks like.
The plan the Indianapolis Colts had for Anthony Richardson, the one designed to turn the athletic marvel with just 13 college starts to his name into an NFL franchise quarterback, has been thrown in the trash. The Colts don’t appear to care about Richardson’s future enough to consider sacrificing the present. The player they drafted with the No. 4 pick in 2023 is now the backup after officially losing his starting job to Daniel Jones on Tuesday.
The decision to move on from Richardson is justifiable. His supremely disappointing first two years in the NFL haven’t convinced anyone he’s capable of blossoming into a franchise quarterback. But to consider Jones, who’s 20 games under .500 as a starter in his career (24-44-1), a better option than Richardson — the franchise’s highest-drafted player since Andrew Luck — is not just an indictment on the young passer. It’s also an indictment of everyone who brought him to Indianapolis in the first place.
The Colts knew Richardson was a project, yet their blueprint was flawed from the start. Colts general manager Chris Ballard has said so himself, repeatedly.
It started in December, when Ballard told former The Athletic columnist Jim Trotter, “I wish we hadn’t played (Richardson) as a rookie.” It continued into the offseason when the GM conceded to our Zak Keefer that he caved to the pressure to play him in 2023, despite his better judgment.
The solution, of course, was to simply start Richardson again in 2024. But by Week 9, he was benched in favor of then-39-year-old Joe Flacco. “He was drowning,” Ballard later said of Richardson. That demotion, just days after Richardson’s infamous tap out, was supposed to last for the rest of the season. It was supposed to be a hard reset for Richardson to truly grasp the magnitude of what it means to be QB1. That is, until Flacco played poorly, the Colts lost two straight games and coach Shane Steichen — the one person who’s had the final say on every QB decision the franchise has made over the past three years — got desperate. Desperate enough to put Richardson back in the lineup. So much for taking things slow, right? So much for learning what it takes to be a starter. So much for having a plan.
Funny enough, amid the Colts’ flip-flopping on Richardson’s role, when he came back from his first benching last year, he delivered the best game of his career in a dramatic road win over the New York Jets. That euphoria was short-lived, though, as Richardson missed the last two games of the season with back spasms and is now being told, yet again, that the bench is the best place for his development.
How long will this benching-for-his-own-good last, do you think? The answer probably has less to do with Richardson and what’s best for him and more to do with whether Jones flops.
But, fine. Let’s say the bench is the best method for Richardson’s growth: Why didn’t the Colts think of that before? I mean, who would have thought the then-21-year-old, who was drafted before he could legally drink and had only 394 career pass attempts at Florida, wouldn’t have been ready to play Week 1 of his rookie season? Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but shouldn’t the Colts, after years of scouting Richardson, have seen this coming? Shouldn’t they have suspected, after watching his habits up close for the four-plus months after they drafted him, that something might be amiss?
“He’s worked,” Steichen said the day he announced Richardson as QB1 in August 2023. “He’s worked his tail off in the building learning the playbook, learning the system.”
Apparently he didn’t work hard enough, because 14 months later, Steichen benched Richardson for what he described as a lack of proper game preparation.
“I think he needs to just keep developing and growing as a professional,” Steichen said in October 2024. “Obviously … the details. All those little things.”
Ballard echoed Steichen’s sentiments at the end of the 2024 season, claiming Richardson’s benching was a crucial part of his development. Asked why it took such a drastic measure to finally get through to Richardson, the GM compared the team’s directives for Richardson to focus more on his job to a parent’s directives for their children to clean their room.
“They don’t do it,” Ballard said.
But Richardson isn’t a child, as Ballard noted. He’s a grown man who inked a nearly $34 million fully guaranteed contract to be the face of an NFL franchise. Considering that investment, personally and financially, who let him cut corners? Who let a poor work ethic slide?
To be clear, the majority of the blame for Richardson’s lack of development falls at his feet. Those flaws are his flaws. He’s the one who subbed out of a game because he was “tired” and was subsequently benched for two weeks because he wasn’t preparing properly. He’s the one whose inability to consistently make simple throws resulted in a league-low 47.7 completion percentage last year. He’s the one who recently acknowledged his low cadence forced the offensive line to ask him to speak louder so they could minimize their pre-snap penalties.
But failure rarely belongs solely to one person — especially failure of this magnitude.
So the notion that Richardson’s struggles are all on him is not valid. Save for Ballard, however, the Colts sure are making it seem that way. Asked Tuesday what he could have done differently as a coach to help Richardson properly develop, Steichen pointed to the injuries that have caused Richardson to miss 17 games through his first two years.
“When you’re not practicing and playing, it’s hard to go out there and do the things you want to do,” Steichen said.
That didn’t answer the question.
Steichen, known as the QB guru who helped unlock Jalen Hurts’ potential in Philly, was asked again Thursday what he could have done differently to help Richardson. Again, the coach who staunchly advocated for the Colts to draft Richardson hardly seemed to acknowledge his responsibility for the young passer’s shortcomings.
“Well, I think you look back in those situations, like I said, I mentioned the injuries, but again, meeting with him. Met a lot with him during those injuries,” Steichen said. “Just, obviously from a mental standpoint, staying in it, and I think he did a good job with that. He’s continued to improve with that. So, those things in the classroom, continue to develop that, and I think that’s just an ongoing process is what we’re going through.”
If that response doesn’t make any sense to you, you’re not the only one. Word salad is never filling, but for some reason, Steichen continues to serve it when pressed on the most important position within the franchise. It’s notable, by the way, that Richardson must constantly, and often candidly, answer for his failures when Steichen, who made him one of the youngest starting QBs in the NFL, chooses to deflect.
But then, this is the same coach who, last year, said Richardson was “really sore” before he was ruled out of a must-win road game against the New York Giants because of back and foot injuries. Richardson was publicly shamed for not toughening up and making himself available for his team’s playoff hopes, only for the quarterback to reveal days later that he could “barely even walk” due to severe back spasms. That’s a lot different from “really sore,” right?
Steichen is also the same coach who said (1) “I can’t predict the future,” when asked if Richardson would ever start again after his first benching; (2) Flacco “will be our guy going forward” through the end of the 2024 season; and (3) finally, after benching Flacco and reversing course, Richardson is “going to be our franchise quarterback” when he put Richardson back in the lineup. The time between those three widely different statements? A grand total of 14 days.
“I think whoever’s out there gives us the best chance to win,” Steichen said after re-announcing Richardson as QB1 in November 2024. “I’m going to give strength to every player on our football team — that whoever’s out there is going to give us the best chance.”
Aside from Steichen, the person who works most closely with Richardson is Colts QBs coach Cam Turner. His job, as Turner explained, is geared toward the “day-to-day development” of the quarterbacks. So why, under Turner’s tutelage, hasn’t Richardson developed? Or, at least, why hasn’t he developed enough to beat out Jones, who was jettisoned from New York just two years after leading the Giants to the playoffs?
“I feel like I’ve tried everything I can do, and I feel like he’s giving great effort in that aspect, too,” Turner said. “I don’t think, either way, it’s one or the other (at fault). I just think right now the consistency is not where we wanted to be.”
There’s some irony in the Colts asking Richardson to be consistent when they haven’t been consistent themselves. He’s raw and needs reps, they said. That’s why he needs to start. No, actually, he’s too naive and must learn to be a pro, they said. That’s why he must sit.
Start. Sit. Start. Sit.
No wonder Richardson’s agent told ESPN he doesn’t feel like he can “trust” the Colts.
Now that Richardson’s back on the bench, the question is: Will that trust ever be restored?
The Colts seem to have punted on Richardson’s development — they opted against playing him in the preseason finale because Steichen doesn’t want to “risk” the backup — for one all-or-nothing season of Jones. Again, that decision is understandable for a regime that might be on the hot seat and doesn’t believe it can win with Richardson. Jones, in just five months, has already built a strong reputation for being a hard worker in Indianapolis. But as we saw for most of his six-year tenure with the Giants, it will take a lot more than early-morning arrivals at the team facility for the 2019 No. 6 pick to revive his career.
Jones has scored 85 touchdowns and committed 73 turnovers in 70 NFL games. His lackluster resume suggests he will need a lot of direction to play winning football again. For the Colts’ sake, they’d better have a clearer map for Jones than they did for Richardson; otherwise, this QB swap could lead to another dead end.
(Photo: Justin Casterline / Getty Images)