Indianapolis announced Tuesday that Daniel Jones will be its Week 1 starter—and he won’t have a short leash. Does that mean Richardson’s tenure with the team is over? And what does it signal about his development?
No matter how the Colts attempt to frame it, naming Daniel Jones their Week 1 starter marks the end of the Anthony Richardson era in Indianapolis. Head coach Shane Steichen didn’t just name Jones his starter on Tuesday; he locked him in at the top of the quarterback depth chart for all of 2025. “He’s the starting QB for the season," Steichen told reporters. “I don’t want to have a short leash on that.” If things go according to Steichen’s plan—and if Jones stays healthy—Richardson won’t play another down before the 2026 offseason, when the Colts will have to decide whether to pick up his fifth-year option, which would net Richardson a fully guaranteed $20-million-plus salary for the 2027 season. That, at present, looks like a rather straightforward decision for the team.
Steichen saying Jones won’t have to worry about a “short leash” has to be frustrating for Richardson to hear, as Richardson himself wasn’t afforded a long leash across his first two NFL seasons. And this downward spiral that’s ended with him losing his job to Jones can be traced back to his 10th professional start. In that Week 8 game last season, a 23-20 loss at Houston, Richardson asked out of a play to catch his breath following a long scramble. Steichen benched Richardson the following day, and reports that the team was concerned about his lack of preparation trickled out shortly after. It didn’t help that Richardson’s completion percentage had dipped into the low 50s, or that he was still making rookie mistakes from the pocket. The sentiment out of Indianapolis was that Richardson still had a lot to learn about being a pro quarterback.
Richardson took accountability for that. He said he changed his diet and spent more time studying the playbook over the offseason. There were clips of him putting in on-field work before training camp practices, and Colts general manager Chris Ballard said he was “proud” of the way the third-year quarterback had improved his work habits. By all accounts, the camp battle between Jones—who signed a one-year, $14 million contract with the team in free agency—and Richardson was competitive. Steichen said his decision ultimately came down to which quarterback operated his offense most competently, and that was Jones.
The fact that the Colts coaches felt Jones had the best grasp of the offense is a concerning sign, to say the least. Jones has been in the building for only a few months, while Richardson is entering his third year in the same system. Now, that could be a sign of bad coaching—if Richardson is still struggling with picking up the finer details of the offense, the Colts should find different methods of teaching them. Or it could be the player’s fault, especially as said quarterback is on record saying he wasn’t doing enough work off the field over the first couple seasons of his career.
But it’s also hard to put the blame for this situation on any one person or factor. Richardson, who started just 13 games in college, came into the NFL needing to play early and often if this experiment was ever going to work. He played in an RPO-heavy scheme at Florida that didn’t ask him to make NFL-style reads. Plus, Richardson’s decision-making also needed some fine-tuning. He never shied away from testing tight windows in college. And while he got away with it (for the most part) there, he still hasn’t learned what he can and can’t get away with against professional secondaries.
Richardson played just four games as a rookie before going down for the season with a shoulder injury. He missed two early-season games due to injury in 2024 before his benching at midseason. And while Richardson did eventually reclaim the starting job, he ended his second season with just 15 career starts and 395 total dropbacks. To put that in perspective, his draftmates C.J. Stroud and Bryce Young have logged well over 1,000 dropbacks each to this point in their pro careers. Caleb Williams, Bo Nix, and Jayden Daniels nearly doubled him up in just one season. And Drake Maye, who didn’t take over as the Patriots starter until Week 6 last year, already has more NFL dropbacks. Richardson hasn’t played enough football on Sundays—but even by his own admission, he probably hadn’t been doing enough work Monday through Saturday to warrant the reps when he was healthy enough to play.
If there is a glimmer of hope for Richardson, that’s it. He may not play football in 2025, but that doesn’t mean he can’t address some clear areas of weakness in his game. He can dive even deeper into the Colts playbook, learn how to prepare like a professional quarterback, and maybe work on his conditioning so he doesn’t have to tap out of games. Even if taking those strides doesn’t ultimately salvage his Colts career, it could help earn him opportunities elsewhere.
We’ve seen other first-round disappointments blossom in new environments, including Baker Mayfield in Tampa Bay and Sam Darnold in Minnesota. And Richardson is still one of the youngest quarterbacks in the league. He’s younger than Williams, Nix, Daniels, and Michael Penix Jr. Hell, he’s only three days older than this year’s first overall pick, Cam Ward. And his numbers aren’t that bad—at least, not compared to the quarterback who went first in Richardson’s draft.
Anthony Richardson vs. Bryce Young, 2023-2024 (TruMedia)
Player Total EPA Drpbk Yd/Db EPA/DB Success % TTT aDOT
Bryce Young -139.9 1,069 4.8 -0.13 37.5% 2.77 8.1
Anthony Richardson -33.1 395 6.3 -0.08 38.5% 2.78 11.2
There are two big differences in how Young and Richardson are perceived by their teams going into their third seasons. Young has played a lot of football, which has allowed him and the Panthers to hone in on his strengths and build around them. Richardson hasn’t really had that opportunity, and his one clear strength—his running ability—is a big reason why he’s gotten injured and has had trouble staying on the field. The other is harder to quantify. Young seems to meet all of the preparation expectations his franchise has set out for him. Richardson, very clearly, has not.
We can learn a lot about quarterback evaluation and development from Richardson’s experience, but it’s important not to go too far when drawing conclusions. Richardson was a unique prospect who had a tumultuous start to his career. Some of that is of his own doing; some of it can be blamed on rotten injury luck; and some of it is on the Colts. Who knows where Richardson would be in his development if he had landed with another organization, or had just been able to play more football over the past 24 months? But I’m not sure his lack of development should reflect on how we view similar prospects. It’s easy to point to Richardson’s crappy completion percentage in college and conclude that NFL teams should pass on toolsy prospects with bad accuracy, but the reigning league MVP—and the guy he narrowly beat out for the award last year—entered the league with similar scouting reports and are clearly doing just fine.
Richardson’s failures, up until this point, have had nothing to do with his physical ability and very little to do with his on-field performance through 395 dropbacks. His approach to playing the quarterback position has been the biggest factor. The good news for Richardson, if there’s any to be found after losing a QB competition to Daniel Jones in the year 2025, is that he doesn’t need to be on the field to make that improvement. And given Jones’s track record of injuries and poor play across six NFL seasons, it may only be a matter of time before Richardson gets a chance to show he can do it on the field, too.
[Steven Ruiz
Steven Ruiz](https://www.theringer.com/creator/steven-ruiz)Steven Ruiz has been an NFL analyst and QB ranker at The Ringer since 2021. He’s a D.C. native who roots for all the local teams except for the Commanders. As a child, he knew enough ball to not pick the team owned by Dan Snyder—but not enough to avoid choosing the Panthers.