According to Indianapolis Colts head coach Shane Steichen, 3rd-year pro Anthony Richardson will be the starting quarterback for the team’s preseason opener on the road Thursday night against the Baltimore Ravens:
Steichen indicated this past weekend that he would alternate preseason starts for Richardson and veteran Daniel Jones, who is also competing for the Colts’ QB1 job—although the order of those starts wasn’t known then.
We now know that while Richardson will get the nod in the preseason opener, it will be Jones making his Colts home debut against the Green Bay Packers a weekend later.
Their current order of starts may not be as telling as their respective preseason performances regarding who ultimately wins the first-team job. It’ll be interesting to see if this QB1 competition carries over into the preseason finale during Week 3, or if the Colts will already have a clear head-and-shoulders winner by then.
So far throughout training camp, Richardson, the still 23-year-old quarterback who was the former 4th overall pick by Indianapolis of the 2023 NFL Draft, appears to have a slight edge. While he hasn’t been quite as consistent on a daily practice basis, he’s also offered more explosive play ability than Jones offensively.
Barring a poor performance against the Ravens, a dreadful stretch to end training camp, or Jones simply catching fire here in camp and preseason, and Richardson appears to be in the driver’s seat for the starting job right now.
Jones has done what the Colts ideally intended him to do when they signed him as a free agent this offseason, serve as enough viable competition to truly push Richardson in training camp and make him earn the QB1 job.
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