INDIANAPOLIS — The Colts' monumental decision to pick Anthony Richardson on Thursday night began with Morocco Brown.
Indianapolis was in the dog days of training camp, and Chris Ballard’s phone just kept buzzing.
Brown was watching the Gators practice in Florida.
The texts kept coming.
“You should see the show that I’m seeing on this practice field right now,” Brown texted Ballard.
Doyel:Anthony Richardson is the perfect lump of QB clay; can the Colts develop him?
Florida quarterback Anthony Richardson speaks to the media after being selected 4th by the Indianapolis Colts at the 2023 NFL Draft, Thursday, April 27, 2023, in Kansas City, MO.
Richardson, a four-star recruit, had just one start, 66 passes and 58 rushing attempts to his name at the time.
But the ability was undeniable, and even though the Colts had no way of knowing at the time that their Matt Ryan plans would blow up in their face in spectacular fashion, Indianapolis knew it was going to need a young, potential franchise quarterback.
Richardson was firmly on the radar.
'I see a generational talent'
The season didn’t go the way they wanted.
For Richardson, or for the Colts. While Ryan and the offensive line were lighting the fire that consumed Frank Reich’s regime in Indianapolis, Richardson was struggling through a 6-6 season at Florida, held back by a new staff and a subpar roster around him.
The twin disappointments also put the two parties in range of each other.
A 4-12-1 finish for the Colts handed Indianapolis the No. 4 pick, the top-five selection typically necessary to draft a quarterback of the future. By the same token, Richardson’s underwhelming production put enough doubt into his draft stock that he didn’t overtake Alabama’s Bryce Young or Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud for the No. 1 spot in a quarterback class that didn’t have a can’t-miss prospect.
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Richardson’s numbers didn’t pop.
But the Colts loved what they saw on the tape.
The 6-4, 244-pound frame, built big, long and powerful like a defensive end. The speed, eye-popping on tape, timed at 4.43 seconds in the 40-yard dash. An incredibly powerful arm, with easy velocity. All of that ability was on display at the NFL scouting combine, when Richardson put together the best quarterback workout in the history of the event.
The Colts already knew about all of that stuff. That’s why Brown was blowing up Ballard’s phone in August.
“I see a generational talent,” Brown told the Colts’ in-house video team at Florida’s pro day. “Something that may come along every 50 years.”
Indianapolis needed to see more than those physical attributes on the tape.
As athletic as Richardson is, the Colts needed to see him put it together on the football field.
Ballard wanted to see how Richardson handled the blitz.
“He’s young, but he’s very poised,” Ballard said. “I think you see it when he plays … even though he hasn’t had a lot of starts. I kept going back and watching all of his pressures, everybody that pressured him, and that’s when you really saw his poise come to light.”
A lot of quarterbacks who can make plays with their feet end up running into as many sacks as they escape.
Playing behind a suspect offensive line, Richardson was sacked just 14 times.
“When you watch him against pressure in the pocket, his movements in the pocket, feeling the rush, not (looking at) the rush, being able to get out of the pocket and create the explosive plays that he does, it’s pretty dynamic,” Steichen said.
The plays Richardson can make with his feet jump off the tape. Richardson had a run of 45 yards against Utah, 81 against LSU, 60 yards against Texas A&M. Because of the NFL’s increasing use of quarterbacks as a running weapon — a weapon Ballard and team owner Jim Irsay have long coveted — Richardson’s speed and natural open-field ability drew most of the draft analysts' attention during the months leading up to the draft.
Fresh off coaching Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts to back-to-back seasons with more than 750 rushing yards, Steichen obviously knows how devastating a running quarterback can be.
But that’s not the part of Richardson's game that caught Steichen's eye initially, that prompted him to call Ballard into his office just two weeks into his new job as the Colts head coach and tell his new boss that Richardson was special, a story Ballard relayed on the Pat McAfee Show after making the pick Thursday.
"When a guy can run and add that element to your offense, it’s a big plus. It puts stress on defenses, and obviously, he has that capability,” Steichen said. “But I just wouldn’t sleep on his throwing ability, either. That ball comes out pretty now. He can spin it, he’s got a huge arm.”
The tape matters more to Ballard than almost anything.
But Richardson’s a quarterback, a position that made him the face of the franchise the moment the Colts turned in the card with his name on it.
Indianapolis still had to meet him.
'I felt like I could have done a little better'
The Colts met privately with Richardson twice.
Once in Florida to work him out, then again in the team’s facility in Indianapolis. The Colts do not put as much stock in the Combine throwing sessions or the pro days as other teams; Ballard and Steichen prefer to put a player through his paces on their terms, rather than on the terms set up by the prospect’s camp.
“When we went and worked him out, we got to see a lot, because we got to put him through drills that fit us,” Ballard said.
Richardson left the workout thinking he might have come up a little short.
“I felt like I could have done a little better,” Richardson said.
The Florida visit included a workout; the Indianapolis visit focused on the man in front of them. When Steichen looks at a quarterback, he’s looking for an obsessive pursuit of perfection, a quality that’s been true of all three star quarterbacks he’s coached: Hurts, Justin Herbert and Philip Rivers.
He wanted to hear about Richardson’s process, how he saw the game, how hard he worked.
And he didn’t want to hear it only from Richardson.
“There’s a lot of guys that I know, that I talked to about him, and everything was right at the top of the list,” Steichen said. “Then having him in.”
Richardson nailed the personal profile the Colts were trying to find.
He left Indianapolis feeling a lot better than he’d felt about his Florida workout.
“I kind of had a feeling that they were going to select me, because I fell in love with the people in the building when I was there on my visit,” Richardson said. “It felt like home.”
Ballard, the man making the final decision, felt the same way.
The Colts general manager said he was comfortable picking Richardson after that visit, a visit that took place almost a month ago.
When it got tense for the Colts in the draft
The Colts loved Richardson.
Days before the draft, Indianapolis called Richardson and told him that they’d take him if the board fell their way.
But they couldn’t guarantee they were going to get him. Indianapolis had let Carolina trade up to No. 1, and the Panthers selected Bryce Young. Houston bucked the predictions and took Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud at No. 2.
Arizona was initially sitting at No. 3, and the Cardinals don’t need a quarterback with Kyler Murray under contract. New Arizona general manager Monti Ossenfort had put the pick up for sale, and although Indianapolis had talked to the Cardinals, Ballard decided to wait out the process.
“It got a little tense there at (No.) 3,” Ballard said. “Any time you’re sitting there and you’ve kind of targeted a guy, you’re always worried about somebody jumping up and getting him. You always wonder if somebody’s laying in the weeds.”
Arizona got its trade.
From Houston, a team that had already selected its quarterback. The Texans took Alabama defensive end Will Anderson.
Indianapolis had its quarterback of the future.
Patience
As much as the Colts like Richardson, they know that he’s not a finished product.
Richardson doesn’t turn 21 until next month, and although he has a talented arm, his accuracy can be an issue. Richardson completed just 53.8% of his passes in his lone season as a starter at Florida. Both Ballard and Steichen had listed accuracy as one of the most important attributes they could find in a passer.
But the improvements made by other players who were inaccurate at the college level, Buffalo star Josh Allen being the most famous, convinced the Colts that Richardson’s accuracy can improve.
“It’s a fair assessment,” Ballard said. “The one thing we’re seeing in the league now is guys, you can work on it, get them more accurate. Footwork, fundamentals, there’s certain things we can do, and I think you’ve seen guys jump.”
The Colts also know it might take some time for Richardson to reach his potential.
Ballard kept repeating that fact, reiterating the need for patience, after making a pick that he knew would put enormous pressure on Richardson the moment he made it.
“Let’s not expect him to be Superman from Day 1,” Ballard said. “I think history shows, there’s not many of them that are Superman from Day 1. Some of them, it takes two or three years.”
That doesn’t mean Richardson’s a lock to spend most of his rookie season on the bench. Indianapolis has veteran backup Gardner Minshew in the building, but Steichen has now suggested twice that he’s not naming Minshew the Week 1 starter right away.
“Gardner’s a good player,” Steichen said. “Obviously, we brought him in here for a reason, and obviously, we’ll see how that whole thing shakes out.”
Partly, Steichen might be saying that because he knows the best way for Richardson to get better is to play.
Play, make mistakes, learn from them. The kind of experience he didn’t get at Florida.
“I think the development of players comes with more experience,” Steichen said. “When you play more, that’s how you develop.”
The Hurts experience has also taught Steichen that a running quarterback can play faster than people expect, because of the stress he puts on the defense and the possibilities he opens for the playbook.
Brown felt the same way.
That’s why he was pounding the table so hard throughout this process.
“This guy has a floor level that other people’s ceilings will never reach,” Brown told the Colts at that Florida pro day, pushing back on the narrative that Indianapolis would have made a “safer” pick by taking somebody like Kentucky’s Will Levis or Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker, who were both still available at the end of Thursday’s first round.
But taking Richardson is undeniably a big swing, and the Colts seem to know that.
“We like what he can be,” Ballard said.
Now, it’s up to the Colts to get Richardson there.
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04-28-2023, 09:17 AM
Anthony Richardson was their man
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