INDIANAPOLIS — Every time Colts quarterbacks coach Cam Turner turns around, Anthony Richardson is there.
Asking questions.
In quarterback meetings. After the quarterback meetings. Walking through the hall, walking to the team meeting. When Richardson’s out of the building, Turner’s phone keeps lighting up, Richardson’s name on the other line. Texts. Calls.
A steady of stream of questions about the Indianapolis playbook, Richardson’s role in running the offense head coach Shane Steichen is installing during training camp.
“I don’t call it bugging me,” Turner said. “I love it. It makes me fired up.”
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Turner, who was hired to Steichen’s staff this offseason after working with Cam Newton in Carolina and Kyler Murray in Arizona, is the coach who will spend the most time with Richardson.
Steichen, of course, bears the primary responsibility for developing Richardson; it’s partly why he was hired as head coach after an exhaustive search. Offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter is, of course, also going to play a significant role in Richardson’s development.
But Turner is with Richardson in every meeting room, offering feedback immediately after each play on the training camp field, working in every positional drill.
In some cases, he’s the defender in Richardson’s way. While the rest of the Colts were doing a special teams period Wednesday, the quarterbacks were working on a red zone drill, and Turner played the role of one of the defensive backs in the end zone, sliding one way or the other with another coach to create a window, the window Richardson had to recognize and fire the ball through to Reggie Wayne.
“I’m trying to give him a read as best as I can,” Turner said. “Something to look at, instead of just throwing footballs on air. Everything I do, I try to simulate each game as much as possible. You don’t just want to throw on air, where there’s no defenders. We want them to react.”
The Colts’ other quarterback drills follow the same philosophy.
At times, Richardson and the rest of the Indianapolis quarterbacks are firing into small targets in the middle of nets while on the move; other times, they’re firing over a coach in front of them. Drills like that happen all over the NFL, every day, but with a top-five draft pick at quarterback, they take on a little more significance in a rookie’s first training camp.
Especially for a player like Richardson, who is working hard to overhaul his throwing motion and become a more accurate passer.
“Getting my legs right,” Richardson said. “Before, I just relied on my arm, because like (the reporter) said, big arm. But I didn’t really use my legs as much, so now it’s just getting my feet faster, make sure I’m pointed the right way, using my hips a lot more.”
A process that’s as much mental as it is physical.
Richardson works with a quarterback coach in the offseason, but a lot of the fundamentals of his position are dictated by the play call, the Colts’ playbook and the design of each play he’s running.
“I tell this to the quarterbacks all the time, the rhythm of your drop plays a huge part into the timing of the route,” Steichen said. “Not all drops are going to be the same. You’ve got to look at leverage, matchup, who is playing what, and all those different things.”
And that brings Richardson back to the playbook, the scheme he’s been studying intently since he arrived in Indianapolis, so intently that teammates say it’s sometimes hard to get his attention in the locker room.
All that study produces a lot of questions.
The kind that keep blowing up Turner’s phone.
“And he has good ones, too,” Turner said. “They’re not just generic.”
Richardson has to know the playbook to handle the rigors of the practices in front of him.
Veteran backup Gardner Minshew took every one of the first-team snaps in the team’s opening practice on Wednesday, but Steichen has promised that Richardson will get plenty in the future. The Colts coaching staff planned almost all of those numbers out before training camp even began.
“We had a good idea, going into camp, how we wanted to do it,” Turner said. “Things will be adjusted as needed, but we did have a starting point.”
And the Colts are going fast in practice, running a lot of plays quickly by design.
“I’ve said this in the past, I think when you play fast with young quarterbacks, it definitely helps,” Steichen said. “They don’t have to think about too much stuff.”
The goal is to give Richardson plenty of information, feed that hunger for knowledge as much as possible.
While realizing at the same time that a rookie’s not going to immediately understand every call and check intuitively, the way a 15-year veteran like Philip Rivers or Matt Ryan picked up things in Colts practices under the previous staff.
Unlike those guys, Richardson does not have a decade and a half’s worth of games stored in his memory banks yet.
“There’s almost unlimited things he can learn,” Cooter said.
As much as Richardson wants to learn everything right away, the coaching staff has a progression put together.
Not only for him, but for the rest of the offense. Like most NFL teams, the Colts are installing parts of their playbook each day during training camp, gradually building towards a complete understanding. Turner makes it a point to give Richardson and the rest of the quarterbacks coaching points almost immediately after plays, in order to help the lesson stick.
“We have really tried to make an emphasis, really set him up for success, give him every chance to learn and study and improve,” Cooter said. “But you have to be a little bit cognizant of: ‘What is his physical workload, what’s he doing in the weight room, what’s the rest of his situation look like,' so you don’t overwhelm a guy with every single note you’ve ever learned in your coaching career.”
The best part about all the questions Richardson’s asking is that it’s been easy for the coaching staff to see his progression so far.
“You can tell he’s been studying all summer,” Turner said. “He didn’t just go on summer vacation, for five weeks off. He’s been in his book working.”
From the sounds of it, Richardson’s mastery of the playbook will be the key factor in deciding when he makes his first appearance in the starting lineup, a day the Colts fan base is eagerly anticipating.
‘You want them to be ready, to be able to handle enough of the offense where we can give him enough tools to where they can perform and have success,” Indianapolis general manager Chris Ballard said. “You want to be able to set him up to have some success early, not just all downhill.”
The Colts coaching staff will know when that time comes.
From Turner’s perspective, that barometer is pretty easy to gauge.
“Not making the same mistake twice,” Turner said. “Once he makes it, growing from it, and the next time you see him correct it, that’s when you know: ‘Alright, he’s got it.’”
Richardson can keep the questions coming.
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07-28-2023, 11:12 AM
How Colts coaching staff plans to develop Anthony Richardson during training camp
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